Henry Geldzahler (July 9, 1935 – August 16, 1994) was a Belgian-born American
curator of
contemporary art in the late 20th century, as well as a
historian and
critic of
modern art. He is best known for his work at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and as New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, and for his social role in the art world with a close relationship with contemporary artists.
He has been described as "the most powerful and controversial art curator alive" and the art critic of The New Yorker magazine Calvin Tomkins said ‘If you were involved in any way in the [cultural] world, you met Henry.’[1]
Early life
Born in
Antwerp, Belgium, Geldzahler's Jewish family emigrated to the
United States in 1940.[2] He graduated from
Yale University in 1957, where he was a member of
Manuscript Society.[3] After graduating from Yale, he began work on a doctorate in art history at
Harvard University, but he left graduate school in 1960.[4]
Career
In 1960, Geldzahler joined the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He became the Curator for American Art there, and later the first Curator for 20th Century Art.
Among his closest friends were Andy Warhol and David Hockney.[1][5]
His time at the Met is most known for his landmark 1969 exhibition, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970,[6] which included his favorite contemporary work and became the talk of the town.[7][4][8] It was the Museum's first exhibition of contemporary American art and marked both the inauguration of the newly established department of Contemporary Arts and the
100th anniversary of the Museum.[9]
The exhibition featured 408 works in 35 galleries, by 43 artists including
Arshile Gorky,
Jackson Pollock,
Frank Stella,
David Smith,
Jasper Johns,
Mark Rothko,
Warhol, and
Robert Rauschenberg.[10] "My guiding principles in deciding which artists to include in the exhibition have been the extent to which their work has commanded critical attention or significantly deflected the course of recent art", said Geldzahler in the press release of the exhibition.[1]
In 1966, he was the United States commissioner to the
Venice Biennale, for which he selected the American artists to be exhibited.[4]
In 1966 he took a temporary leave from the Met to become the first director of the visual arts program of the
National Endowment for the Arts, where he initiated a program of museum grants for the purchase of art made by living American artists.
In 1978 Geldzhaler left the Met and was succeeded in his role there by
Thomas B. Hess.[11] He was then appointed the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for
New York City by
MayorEdward I. Koch. As an openly gay man who was part of the Koch administration and the conservative Metropolitan Museum of Art, Geldzahler contributed significant time and effort to
AIDS-related causes.
After leaving his New York City government cultural post, he continued to write on art, and acted as an independent curator, working at the alternative space
P.S. 1 and the austere high modernist
Dia Art Foundation.
Writings
Geldzhaler wrote, among other works:
Catalog of New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 in 1969
American Painting in the 20th Century (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965),
Charles Bell: The Complete Works, 1970-1990 (Abrams, 1991), and
Making It New: Essays, Interviews, and Talks (Harvest Books, 1996) with an introduction by Mr. Hockney.
He co-wrote Art in Transit: Subway Drawings by Keith Haring (1984),
Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties (Thames and Hudson, 1993)
Geldzahler is the subject of a
documentary film called Who Gets to Call It Art? (2006) by Peter Rosen.
He is depicted in portraits by several of his artist friends, including a famous 1969 double portrait by
David Hockney of Geldzahler with his then partner, painter
Christopher Scott.[15] Other artists made his portrait such as
Andy Warhol,
Frank Stella,
Alice Neel, and the sculptor
George Segal "There are lots of pictures of Henry. He didn’t have many mirrors in his home. He knew what he looked like just by asking people to make portraits of him.’ Hockney said.[1]
Geldzahler is depicted in an
Andy Warhol movie, Henry Geldzahler (1964), filmed silent and in black-and-white the first week of July 1964. The film consists of Geldzahler smoking a cigar and becoming increasingly uncomfortable for 97 minutes.[16]
He appeared, as himself, in the 1974 David Hockney biopic, A Bigger Splash.
In the song "Forever Changed" of their 1990
albumSongs for Drella,
Lou Reed and
John Cale, speaking and singing in the first person, as
Andy Warhol, mention Geldzahler as one of the people who'd "seen [Warhol] through."