Paul Holdengräber

Paul Bernard Holdengräber (born March 15, 1960) is an American interviewer, curator and writer. He was Director of New York Public Library (NYPL)'s Public Programming, most known for organizing literary conversations for the NYPL's public program series, LIVE from the NYPL, which he founded. Since February 2012, he has hosted The Paul Holdengräber Show on the Intelligent Channel on YouTube. He is founding Executive Director of The Onassis Foundation LA (OLA), a “center of dialogue” in Los Angeles, beginning in 2019.

Early life

Holdengräber was born in Houston, Texas, to father Kurt Holdengräber, and Erica Holdengräber (née Hass). His parents were Austrian Jews with roots in Romania and Poland who fled Austria to Haiti during World War II. Holdengräber's father was originally a second year medical student who was expelled for being Jewish. Among a very small Jewish community of 107 families, Holdengräber's father grew vegetables and worked as a farmer in Haiti, where he met and married Holdengräber's mother. The family moved from Haiti to Mexico City, where his older sister was born. The family then moved from Mexico to Houston, and eventually settled in Brussels, Belgium. Holdengräber spent much of his youth hitchhiking around Europe.

Holdengräber studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He received a bachelor's degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. In 1995, Holdengräber received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. From 1995 to 1996, he did a post-doctoral fellowship at the Getty Research Institute.

Career

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Holdengräber was the founder and director of the Institute for Arts and Culture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with the idea "to challenge the perception that museums are nothing more than mausoleums for Old Masters". Under Holdengräber's direction, the institute became an active and lively forum for debate with its ambitious lecture series in which painters, poets, performers, writers and thinkers address critical cultural issues through lively talks, discussions and performances.

New York Public Library

In 2004, the then NYPL President Paul LeClerc hired Holdengräber to create a public program at the New York Public Library. Holdengräber founded LIVE from the NYPL, a conversation series with writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists. As the director of LIVE from the NYPL, Holdengräber interviewed hundreds of public personalities, including Patti Smith, Zadie Smith, Anish Kapoor, and Jay Z.

He sees the New York Public Library as a storehouse of knowledge. One of his memorable series of conversations was with the German filmmaker, Werner Herzog.

He has worked in partnership with such organizations as Rolex, The Moth, and PEN World Voices.

The Paul Holdengräber Show

On February 3, 2012, Holdengräber premiered an internet-television talk show called The Paul Holdengräber Show on YouTube's Intelligent Channel. The show has featured interviews with Colum McCann, Elizabeth Gilbert and David Chang.

Teaching

He has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, the University of Miami and Claremont Graduate University.

Personal life

Holdengräber lives in the Los Angeles, California, suburb of Glendale with his wife, Barbara Holdengräber, a writer, and their two sons. He speaks four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. In Brussels, he spoke French as well as Flemish.

Honors

• 2003: French Government, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres
• Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at University of Southern California, Fellow
• 1995-1996: Getty Research Institute, Fellow
• 2010: Austrian President, Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art
• New York Institute for the Humanities, Fellow

Board memberships

• 2000-2004: Santa Monica Museum of Art
• Sun Valley Writers Conference
• Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Trustee
• New York Center for Ballet and the Arts

Selected works and publications

Fluent in four languages, Holdengräber has also written essays and articles for journals in France, Germany, and Spain.

• Holdengräber, Paul (1995). Portrait of the Artist As Collector Walter Benjamin and the Collector's Struggle against Dispersion. Princeton University. OCLC 174013906.
• Mouffe, Chantal; Holdengräber, Paul (translation) (1 January 1989). "Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern?". Social Text (21): 31–45. doi:10.2307/827807. JSTOR 827807. OCLC 5552739238.
• Holdengräber, Paul (1 January 1992). "Between the Profane and the Redemptive: The Collector as Possessor in Walter Benjamin's "Passagen-Werk"". History and Memory. 4 (2): 96–128. ISSN 0935-560X. JSTOR 25618636. OCLC 5542798812.
• Holdengräber, Paul (December 2012). "Hans Ulrich Obrist". SURFACE (104).
• Holdengräber, Paul (2 March 2013). "'Music Is Enough for a Lifetime But a Lifetime Is Not Enough for Music:' Van Cliburn (1934-2013)". The Huffington Post.
• Holdengräber, Paul (1 January 2014). "Interviews: Adam Phillips, The Art of Nonfiction No. 7". The Paris Review. Spring 2014 (208). ISSN 0031-2037.
• Holdengräber, Paul (22 August 2016). "Was the Twentieth Century a Mistake? A Conversation with Werner Herzog". Brick (82).