Contributor

Paul Holdengraber

Director and founder, LIVE from the NYPL

Paul Holdengräber is the Director of Public Programs at The New York Public Library and founder and Director of LIVE from the NYPL.

Since his arrival in 2004, he has reinvented the Library’s event series under the new name LIVE from the NYPL. Instead of only lectures and readings, there are now lively conversations, debates, and surprise performances. In January 2006 Publishers Weekly characterized LIVE as “The Holdengräber Happening . . . [which] has brought intellectual sparkle to book events at NYPL.” In February 2007 W Magazine noted: “With a quirky docket of intellectual events, Paul Holdengräber has turned the New York Public Library into an after-dark hot spot.” Holdengräber has curated over 150 programs on an array of subjects from the politics of "Who Owns Culture?" to the "Battle Over Books" with Google’s library print project to a discussion on "Lust" with Esther Perel and Laura Kipnis, moderated by Holdengräber.

Holdengräber holds a Bachelor's Degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Getty Research Institute from 1995 to 1996, before joining LACMA the following year. He has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, the University of Miami, and Claremont Graduate University. He has been a Fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities (University of Southern California), served as a Board Member at the Santa Monica Museum of Art from 2000 to 2004, is a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and serves on the board of the Sun Valley Writers Conference. Fluent in four languages, Holdengräber has written essays and articles for journals in France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. In 2003, the French government awarded him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.