Born in New York in 1916, Mr.
Cantor studied law and finance at New York University
and entered the securities business in 1934. In 1945,
after returning from the Army, he founded B.G. Cantor
& Co. While visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York that year, Mr. Cantor saw a marble by August
Rodin, The Hand of God. He began his
collection eighteen months later by purchasing a
bronze version of The Hand of God.
During the next fifty years
Mr. Cantor assembled the world's largest and most comprehensive
private collection of works by Rodin — approximately
750 large-scale and small-scale sculptures, plus prints,
drawings, photographs, and Rodin memorabilia. He also collected paintings and
sculpture by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Expressionist artists.
With his wife, Iris, Mr. Cantor undertook
a program to share their collection with the public.
The Cantors have donated more than 475 works
by Rodin to over seventy institutions around
the world. In addition, they have endowed museum galleries and
sculpture gardens and have underwritten important exhibitions.
In 1974 Mr. Cantor donated fifty-two Rodin sculptures and four drawings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which established the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden. The Cantors also provided funding here for the creation of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Plaza in 1986, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery in 1988, and for the museum's building campaign that same year. Mr. Cantor also gave LACMA more than forty-five paintings and sculptures by nineteenth- and
twentieth-century artists, including Max Beckmann, Ludwig Kirchner, and Alfred Sisley. In 1987, with others he sponsored LACMA's showing of the exhibition "Treasures of the Holy Land." In 1990 Mr. Cantor supported the museum's twenty-fifth anniversary and its acquisition fund for nineteenth-century sculpture. During the summer of 1995 his company,
Cantor Fitzgerald, in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, sponsored the exhibition "Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist" at LACMA. Mr. and Mrs. Cantor also contributed to another important Los Angeles cultural resource, the Music Center.
In 1969 Mr. Cantor established
an ongoing program of support at Stanford University.
His donation of 187 Rodin sculptures,
including such monumental works as The
Thinker, The Gates of
Hell, Monumental Head of
Balzac and The Three Shades
, has made Stanford the second-largest repository
of works by Rodin in the world after the Musée Rodin in Paris. He established the
Rodin Research Fund at Stanford to enable Ph.D. candidates specializing in Rodin
studies to conduct research and travel abroad. Known as Cantor Fellows, many
of these scholars have occupied curatorial and professorial positions at major museums and universities such as
the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York University, the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Virginia, and the Getty
Research Institute in Los Angeles. As a result of the Cantor gift, Stanford has
become a world resource on Rodin. Its Rodin collection is supported by the most complete Rodin library in existence outside Paris.
Following the Loma Prieta Earthquake in January 1989, the Cantors made a
major contribution toward the reconstruction and expansion of the Stanford University Museum of Art.
The newly renovated buildings are now known as the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts.
Among his philanthropic activities, in New York
Mr. Cantor actively supported The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With significant contributions from
the Cantors, the Museum established the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Galleries, which opened in
September 1993; the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall; the Iris and B. Gerald
Cantor Roof Garden; and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Galleries for Nineteenth-Century
Sculpture and Decorative Arts. In 1990 the Cantors endowed a curatorship in the department
of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. In addition, the Metropolitan has been the
recipient of thirty-three Rodin sculptures from the Cantor Collection, including The Burghers of Calais.
Mr. and Mrs. Cantor have given generously to the
Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 1991 they provided the museum with a challenge grant to
support ongoing operational expenses during a time of reduced aid from the City of New
York; they also donated sixty Rodin sculptures and three drawings, which are installed in
the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery. In 1988 they established an endowment program to
underwrite scholarly publications devoted to the museum's collections and major special
exhibitions. In 1989 the Cantors provided funds for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor
Auditorium, which opened in April of 1991. Exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that
have received support from the Cantors include "The Intimate Interiors of Edouard
Vuillard" (1990); "Frédéric Bazille: Prophet of Impressionism" (1992);
and "Arata Isozaki: Works in Architecture" (1993).
In 1994 the Cantors partnered with New York City
and New York State in the Cultural Challenge Initiative. Their $421,000 gifts to the Brooklyn
Museum of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art were matched
by city and state governments; the contributions enabled both museums to reopen galleries that had
been closed due to diminished funds. At the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester,
Massachusetts, Cantor donations supported the fine arts program and provided ten Rodin sculptures and twenty-five
sculptures by nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists for the
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery.
As a result of the Cantors' passion for sculpture and their dedication to sharing art
with the public, the Cantor Foundation sponsored an unprecedented series of
outdoor exhibitions of twentieth-century American sculpture in the First Ladies' Garden at the White House.
Begun in 1994 and organized under the auspices of the Association of Art Museum Directors, each
exhibition in this series of exhibitions focused on a region of the United
States and featured works on loan from the
permanent American art collections of its art museums.
In addition to their dedication to
the arts, the Cantors have been commited to the support of medicine and biomedical research. In 1988
they founded the Iris Cantor Center for Breast Imaging at the University
of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, which offers subsidized mammography screenings. In 1991
additional funding provided to the UCLA Medical Center established the Iris Cantor Chair in Breast
Imaging and created the B. Gerald Cantor Research Fund in End-Stage Renal Disease.
In 1995 the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center
opened through the support of the Cantors.
Mr. Cantor also contributed significant funds to
establish the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Fellowship for Original Research and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Research
Laboratory at the Discovery Eye Foundation in Los Angeles.
In New York the Cantors have provided
major support for the Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, with the largest single contribution to
a new breast cancer center. Their contributions
to the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center
include support for the hospital's capital campaign and the creation of
the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Ambulatory Surgery
Center for outpatient care in 1987. They
have supported modernization of facilities for
research,
underwritten fundraising events, women's health symposia, and
professorships. In 1990 they provided funds to the Rogosin Institute at New York Hospital to establish the Iris and
B. Gerald Cantor Laboratory for Immunological Research in Diabetes.
Mr. Cantor received numerous
awards and honors from national governments, museums,
and universities for his generous patronage. In 1973, as
a tribute to his dedication to Rodin scholarship, the
directors of the Musée Rodin in Paris presented him with
an original plaster of The Hand
of God.
In 1980 the President of the Federal
Republic of Brazil presented Mr. Cantor with the honorary rank of Officer of the Order of Rio Branco.
B.
Gerald Cantor was
made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters
by the French Ministry of Culture in 1984. The Brooklyn
Museum of Art presented the Cantors with the
Augustus Graham Medal in May 1989, in honor of
their exceptional support of the Museum. In April 1992
the Cantors were awarded the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Award for
Patronage of the Arts from the Skowhegan School of
Painting and Sculpture. In September 1992 they received the Hugo
N. Dixon Award for excellence in the arts from the
Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1993
Mr. Cantor was named Marshall of the City
of Beverly Hills. That same year, the Cantors received
an Encore Award for their arts patronage from the
Arts and Business Council, and in March 1994
California Governor Pete Wilson presented the Cantors with the
Governor's Award for Individual Patrons of the Arts.
In October 1995 President and Mrs. Clinton
presented the Cantors with the National Medal of Arts
in recognition of their outstanding patronage.
Mr. Cantor
received honorary doctorates of fine arts from Gonzaga University
and the College of the Holy Cross, where he served as
a regent of the President's Council. In 1986 he was
awarded an honorary degree by Long Island
University, Brooklyn Campus. He served as a trustee, then
trustee emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art;
a trustee, then honorary life trustee, of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, and a member of the
Business Committee for the Arts.
