"The Last Supper", The Festival of the Arts, Laguna Beach

"The Art Detective" is the theme for this year's Pageant of the Masters, the summer festival in Laguna Beach, California, which has shown the recreation of artistic masterpieces for more than eight decades. The 2014 program (showing through August 30) includes Vermeer's 1664 painting "The Concert" (stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990) and Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" (nearly destroyed in the bombing of Milan in World War II (here's a link to the rest of the program).

Pageant Director Diane Challis Davy came up with the motif about three years ago, but hadn’t been able to implement it until now. “This art detective theme has been on the back burner for several years,” said Davy, who is directing her 19th consecutive Pageant of the Masters this summer. “It is really quite coincidental that there’s so much in the news these days about World War II art, and lost and stolen art. So our show will open with scenes of art that disappeared, and art that went into hiding during World War II.” Davy says her initial inspiration came from TV shows like “The History Detectives” and “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS and the BBC “Connections” documentary series created by science historian James Burke. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes also served a key influence.