George Blumenthal (banker)
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George Blumenthal | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 7th president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art | |
| In office 1934–1941 | |
| Preceded by | William Sloane Coffin |
| Succeeded by | William Church Osborn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | April 7, 1858 |
| Died | June 26, 1941 (aged 83) New York City, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) |
Mary Clews (after 1935) |
| Relations | Marc E. Meyer (father-in-law) Eugene Meyer (brother-in-law) |
| Occupation | Banker |
George Blumenthal (April 7, 1858 – June 26, 1941) was a German-born banker who served as the head of the U.S branch of Lazard Frères.
Blumenthal was born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main in 1858[1][2] to Hermann Blumenthal and Helene Hickel.
Career
Blumenthal a foreign-exchange banker was sent to the United States by Speyer & Co.,[1] and rose to prominence as the head of the U.S branch of Lazard Frères. He was also a partner of Lazard Frères in France. He retired from Lazard in 1901, giving up his seat on the stock exchange, and returned as a partner in 1906. He returned to the stock exchange in 1916, purchasing a seat for $63,000 (equivalent to $1,863,991 today).[3] With J. P. Morgan the elder, he was one of five bankers who saved Grover Cleveland from giving up specie payments in 1896, with their $65,000,000 gold loans.[1]
Philanthropy
In New York, he served as president of the Mount Sinai Hospital,[4] where he donated $2 million and where the Blumenthal auditorium is named after him. He was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years as well as president of the American Hospital of Paris. He served as the seventh president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1934 until his death in 1941, where he gave $1 million[1] and to which he bequeathed the Patio from the Castle of Vélez Blanco, a colonnaded Spanish Renaissance patio.[5] After his death, he was succeeded by William Church Osborn.[6]
His niece, Katharine Graham, in her memoir Personal History, described her uncle as a "difficult man with a big ego". He and Florence also named the Blumenthal Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which contains rare and illustrated books, manuscripts, Haggadot, as a resource for scholarly research.[7]
