Henry Money Payer

Henry Geldzahler (* 1935 in Antwerp , † 1994 in Southampton, Suffolk County (New York) ) was an American curator for contemporary art from Belgium.

Life

Henry Geldzahler was born in Belgium in 1935 to Jewish parents. The father worked as a diamond dealer in Antwerp. In 1940 the family had to flee the Nazis and settled in New York City . Money payer grew up in Manhattan and then studied at Yale University , where he graduated. Then he began from 1957 a doctoral degree at Harvard University , which he did not complete. Since 1960 he has worked as a curator for 20th century American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Unlike most of his fellow curators, he made close personal friendships with the artists he oversees, including Jackson Pollock , Willem de Kooning , Jasper Johns , Frank Stella and - above all - Andy Warhol . Warhol met Geldzahler in 1960 through the art dealer Ivan Karp , who worked as an assistant director in Leo Castelli's gallery . They soon became friends and talked on the phone practically every day and attended receptions and parties together.

The day after the filming of Empire , in which some reels of film were left unexposed, Andy Warhol used leftover material to photograph money payers on the Factory's famous “red couch” . The film was filmed on Sunday, July 26, 1964. The actor, mostly left alone by Warhol, sat there, stared into the camera and smoked a cigar. Since the recordings stretched over two hours (total length of the finished film: 99 min.), One can see how money-payers feel increasingly uncomfortable. In the end he is huddled like a fetus on the sofa. The friendship between Warhol and Geldzahler cooled in 1965 markedly and was seriously compromised when money contributors to the curator of contemporary American art at the Biennale of Venice was appointed in 1966; He did not tell his friend this, nor did he choose any of his works for this important exhibition.

In 1969 David Hockney portrayed Money Payer and his partner Christopher Scott, in the 1970s Warhol painted a large portrait of Money Payer. Between 1977 and 1982, Geldzahler worked as a representative for cultural affairs for the Lord Mayor of New York, then until his death from cancer at the age of 59 as a private curator for various foundations. The exhibition New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 , for which he won 35 galleries for contemporary art and with which he was able to implement a new exhibition concept, helped him gain international renown .

Works

• American Painting in the Twentieth Century . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965
• New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970 . New York, Dutton, 1969
• Charles Bell: The Complete Works, 1970-1990 . New York: Abrams, 1991
• Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties . London: Thames and Hudson, 1993