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 Mus�e 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); "Fr�d�ric 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 Mus�e 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.
