Who Gets To Call It Art?

Peter Rosen's fizzy, poppy gloss on the career of Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler (1935-1994), whose owlish looks belied a keen sensibility and adventurous spirit that helped make the careers of multiple generations of post-World War II American artists. Born into a conservative family of wealthy diamond dealers from Belgium, the Yale-educated Geldzahler used his bar mitzvah money to buy works by Frank Stella and Larry Poons. Offered a job as a curatorial assistant at the Met, New York's staid repository of classical art, Geldzahler replied that he'd rather work at the more forward-thinking Whitney. But he reconsidered and remade the job to suit h...