The art historian and curator Henry Geldzahler arrived in the United States aged five, as the Nazis were marching into his native Antwerp, Belgium. A graduate of Yale and Harvard, he became curator of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later the first curator of Twentieth Century Art. When Jack Robinson photographed him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in August 28, 1969, Geldzahler had just opened the landmark exhibition, “New York Painting and Sculpture 1940–1970”. Gregarious and outgoing, he numbered many artists as friends, among them Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, William de Kooning, Frank Stella, Larry Rivers, and David Hockney. Later, Mayor Edward Koch would make him New York’s cultural affairs commissioner and, as an openly gay man, he would do much to raise awareness in the fight against AIDS.