Harold Holzer

Guest Author

Harold Holzer is the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City, a post he assumed in 2015 after 23 years as senior vice president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also served for six years as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and the previous 10 years as co-chair of the U. S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton. In 2008, Holzer was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.

Holzer is the author, co-author, or editor of 52 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. His recent Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, The Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

Holzer’s 2012 book, Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, was the official young adult companion book to the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, for which Holzer served as script consultant. He also authored The Civil War in 50 Objects, which traces the conflict through the collections of the New-York Historical Society, where he served for three years as the Roger Hertog Fellow.

In addition, Holzer has written some 550 articles and reviews for both popular magazines and scholarly journals, published 15 monographs, and contributed chapters or prefaces to more than 50 additional volumes. Among his many other awards are a second-place Lincoln Prize in 2005 for Lincoln at Cooper Union, and book prizes from the Freedom Foundation, the Manuscript Society of America, the Civil War Round Table of New York, and the Illinois State Historical Society, along with lifetime achievement awards from the Lincoln Groups of New York, Washington, Peekskill, Kansas City, and Detroit; as well as honorary degrees from nine colleges and universities. Holzer is a member of many history boards and advisory committees, and for 20 years has served as vice chairman of The Lincoln Forum. He is now a Trustee of The Met.

Holzer lectures throughout the nation. One of his programs, “Lincoln Seen and Heard,” with actor Sam Waterston, has been staged and telecast from such venues as the White House, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and Ford’s Theatre. Holzer also appears frequently on C-SPAN and the History Channel, has served as an on-air commentator on CBS, PBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and the BBC, and has created and performed Lincoln programs onstage with such actors as F. Murray Abraham, Alex Baldwin, Annette Benning, Kathleen Chalfant, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Stephen Lang, Norm Lewis, Liam Neeson, Chris Noth, Anna Deavere Smith, Fritz Weaver, and Dianne Wiest.

Before joining the Met in 1992, Holzer spent his early career as a journalist, a campaign and Congressional press secretary for Rep. Bella Abzug, an aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and a spokesman for New York’s PBS station, WNET. He and his wife Edith live in Rye, New York and have two grown daughters and a grandson.