Paul Holdengräber

Paul Holdengräber is an American interviewer, curator, and writer. He was director of the New York Public Library's public programming and organized literary conversations for the NYPL's public program series, LIVE from the NYPL, which he founded.

From February 2012 to July 2013, he hosted The Paul Holdengräber Show on YouTube's “Intelligent Channel”. In 2019, he was the founding executive director of The Onassis Foundation, a center of dialogue in Los Angeles.

Early life Holdengräber was born in Houston, Texas. His parents were Austrian Jews with roots in Romania and Poland, who fled Austria to Haiti during World War II. His father, Kurt, had been expelled during his second year of medical school, due to being Jewish. In Haiti, amid a Jewish community of 107 families, Kurt grew vegetables and worked as a farmer; it was in that country that he met and married Holdengräber's mother. The family moved from Haiti to Mexico City, where Paul's 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 is 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 hosted debates with painters, poets, performers, writers, and thinkers addressing critical cultural issues through talks, discussions, and performances. Holdengräber founded LIVE from the NYPL, a conversation series with writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists.

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

He has worked in partnership with organizations such 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”.

Teaching He taught at Princeton University, Williams College, the University of Miami, and Claremont Graduate University. with his wife, Barbara Wansbrough, and their two sons. Paul speaks English, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish.

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