By Elena Oumano

Harold Holzer calls himself an “opportunist,” but this is true only in the most positive sense—he embraces all promising opportunities that cross his path. “If a project comes along that sounds exciting, it doesn’t matter how impossible it is,” he says. “I try to dive into it.” The opportunities have come fast and furious for him, leading to a career-balancing act few others could manage.

As senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Holzer “transforms curatorial visions into direct appeals to the press and public” alongside the 150 people he leads in handling “public relations, communications, marketing, advertising, multicultural audience development and outreach, internal communications, government relations and visitor services.” Weekends, vacations and the stray free evening feed Holzer’s insatiable curiosity—first sparked by a fifth-grade project—about all things Lincoln. The result is 43 books—many award-winning—he’s either penned himself, co-authored or edited on the 16th president of the United States. This includes his latest, Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, commissioned by Steven Spielberg as the companion young adult book to his new film,Lincoln.

Holzer’s understanding of his real-life “protagonist” and the society of his times is profound, and driving his writings is a mission to illustrate lessons found in the horrors and achievements of a part of our history that mirrors keenly the issues of our own contemporary culture. Somehow Holzer also speaks and appears on television frequently; he even performed a nationwide tour with actor Sam Waterston of their theatrical piece. And he also squeezes in family life with his wife, two grown daughters and grandkids.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” Holzer says of his work with the Met and the president, and he is careful not to let one seep into the other. The few intersections include a portrait of Lincoln painted from life in Springfield, Ill., in June, 1860, that the Met hung in Holzer’s office, and visiting celebrities such as Tony Bennett, who count Holzer as yet another of the museum’s countless treasures. “They come to the Met because of its standing in the world,” he says modestly. “I happen to be standing at the door.” That’s sometimes literally true. During the Met’s landmark Alexander McQueen exhibit, notorious for up to four-hour waits to get in, Holzer stayed until 2 a.m. during the final weekend, scouting the lines of people winding throughout the museum to cull out seniors and others he felt should be escorted inside.

The Lincoln-related opportunities have snowballed over the years, but Holzer, who started out as a journalist and then flacked for Bella Abzug, never considered scaling back his Met position, one he describes as a “combination graduate school, museum, fishbowl of society, diplomatic center—it’s extraordinary, everything I ever imagined it would be and much more.” That is, until he was recently appointed the first Roger Hertog Fellow at the New York Historical Society. He assumes residency in January and, along with lecturing there, will continue working on his next book, one that explores the relationship between Lincoln and the press. “I will continue to represent the Met as my top priority,” he says, “but I will be letting go of day-to-day branding, marketing and promoting of exhibitions and programs after 20 years in order to focus on strategic press issues and government relations, which I enjoy very much. We have wonderful relations with the city, state and federal governments, including leaders—many of whom I’ve known for years.” This includes former governor Mario Cuomo, with whom he co-authored 1990’s Lincoln on Democracy (which sports a Tony Bennett watercolor of Lincoln gifted to Holzer by the artist/singer on its front cover). “I’ll continue making the argument during these last weeks of fiscal-cliff negotiations that the uniquely American idea of giving charitable donors tax deductions for contributions to health, cultural, scientific and religious institutions and universities is crucial for a society that doesn’t provide government funding for these things,” Holzer goes on to say. “That’s an advocacy we want very much to make, not only on our own behalf but for, say, Bellevue, which needs charitable contributions to rebuild. There’s no Bellevue Hospital in New York for the first time in 200 years!”

Harold Holzer will appear with playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner on Jan. 29 at the New York Historical Society (170 Central Park West) for a discussion following a 7 p.m. screening of the movie Lincoln. Checkwww.nyhistory.org or call 212-485-9268 for more information.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in 'Lincoln'

How Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ parlays the ‘great man’ notions of history

“You begin your second term with semi-divine status,” the 16th president of the United States is told in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln. The evidence of that status is in the film’s mythifying visual style that presents Abraham Lincoln as an icon—silhouetted, spectral, sculptural. The people around him, such as the white and “negro” Union soldiers relating their Civil War experiences of the 1865 Jenkins Ferry massacre during the film’s introduction, are also made into myth. (These weary men have already committed the Gettysburg Address to memory—a presentiment of the schoolboy’s homework in Minority Report.) Spielberg’s concern with “the right side of history” turns the film into cult-of-personality deification; it’s on the side of power, which makes it one of the weirdest pieces of supposedly democratic Americana ever to come out of Hollywood.

The story in Lincoln dramatizes the president’s efforts to install a 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolishes slavery. His struggle is more than politically correct; it is presumed indisputably correct, which takes the movie outside of history; outside of dramatic immediacy. Watching Lincoln is very much like observing a flesh-and-blood diorama. Everything is soon settled (within 2 and a half hours); there’s no emotional suspense.

The trick Spielberg needed to pull off was to make the characters’ moral choices dramatically compelling; analyzing ethics in politics (those pragmatic procedures that deemed the Emancipation Proclamation “a military exigent”). Yet that’s where the film becomes dodgy—open to accusations of merely being a civics lesson, or worse: Spielberg’s equivalent to Richard Attenborough’s stillborn hagiography Gandhi, rather than a companion-piece to his thrilling, brilliantly analytical masterpiece Amistad.

In Amistad, Spielberg cannily transformed the issue of slavery into the intricacy of law; human endeavor and spiritual struggle were historically modified into argument and principle. The Amistad characters Cinque the African (Djimon Hounsou) and John Adams the political forebear (Anthony Hopkins) grappled with the fact of slavery. This time slavery is anthropomorphized. The introduction’s two docile and truculent black soldiers patronizingly prophesize modern attitudes; Lincoln himself (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) describes slavery as a “disease,” which distances it into abstraction. Lincoln attempts to dramatize mere rhetoric. Despite high-flown language, it turns the experience of human lives into platitudes and homilies.

For a lesser filmmaker, the prevarications in Lincoln would be disastrous. But Spielberg’s innate filmmaking resources consistently provide rhythmed imagery: Conventional—as when Lincoln’s aides race to get his disingenuous communiqué. Daring—as when Lincoln dreams his forthcoming struggle as an eerie ship voyage. The film is always something to look at. Congressional arguments are composed to show the vitality of faces and individuals—the elite body politic—like period versions of Francesco Rosi’s courtroom scenes in Hands Across the City and Salvatore Giuliano yet without Rosi’s worry about the masses’ corruption. Spielberg’s vibrant style just barely offsets the mundanity of parliamentary argument. The fact that Lincoln’s drama comes from predictable dialectic, rather than an in-the-moment philosophical conundrum like Amistad, reveals its insufficiency. Lincoln tilts toward magniloquence, using important-sounding words and an exaggeratedly solemn and dignified style.

Spielberg shrewdly chose the histrionic Day-Lewis to impersonate Lincoln with twinkling eyes and a wily, high-pitched voice that humanize the icon. Day-Lewis’ long face is given built-in hollows and shadows that match the Lincoln Memorial and postage stamp figures while also suggesting mysterious depths. His every close-up suggests historical reverence. But this contrasts the fascinating mortal portrayals by Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens and James Spader as W.N. Bilbo, who act through their flesh, courtesy of Janusz Kaminski’s portraitist lighting that suggests the grain of historical painting yet animated by fluid camerawork. At one point (“It’s too hard”), Field’s transition from agony to aggrieved diplomacy is as much the director’s triumph as the actress’. Spader’s grungy agitator feels lived-in, while Jones enlivens a cliché congressional hack—his toupeed role reaches back to a key idiosyncratic characterization in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

With Lincoln, Spielberg assumes his place in the descent of American cinematic mythmakers following Griffith and John Ford—a fact already evident, and earned, in Amistad. Here it’s a self-conscious effort. Not because it’s impossible to portray Abraham Lincoln any way other than worshipfully but because Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (adapting a book by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin) try fitting Lincoln into a contemporary political paradigm.

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot
Tired of waiting in the stifling heat for Shakespeare in the Park to no avail? Fear not; there’s another free outdoor option to view the Bard’s work. The Drilling Company’s LES staple, taking place in the municipal parking lot at the corner of Broome and Ludlow streets, will present The Merry Wives of Windsor in July, followed by Coriolanus in August. Keep in mind that these productions are prone to interruption; the action occurs around parked cars whose drivers sometimes return and drive away mid-performance. Now that’s something performers never needed to concern themselves with during the Elizabethan era!
Thursdays-Saturdays, July 12-28 & Aug. 2-18, 8 p.m.; free. Broome St. at Ludlow St., shakespeareintheparkinglot.com.

Upper West Side
Shakespeare in the Park
It wouldn’t be summer without a trip (or better yet, two) to the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, where the Public Theater presents Shakespeare in the Park. This summer, it isn’t just the Bard taking the stage, however. In addition to As You Like It, starring Oliver Platt and Lily Rabe, there will also be a run of Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical Into the Woods, featuring movie star Amy Adams and Broadway vet Donna Murphy.
As You Like It opens June 5, Into the Woods opens July 2; free. The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, enter at W. 81st St. & Central Park West, shakespeareinthepark.org.

Upper West Side
Lincoln Center Theater Festival
The esteemed arts institution will offer a diverse mix of live programming, including two works—Giselle and Orpheus and Eurydice—by the Paris Opera Ballet and a 70th birthday tribute to late soul great Curtis Mayfield on July 20. Performers will include Tunde Adebimpe, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ryan Montbleau, Sinéad O’Connor and Mavis Staples. The National Theatre of Scotland will perform Macbeth, starring Tony winner Alan Cumming as the famed Thane of Cawdor. And six years after playing Hedda Gabler at BAM, Cate Blanchett and the Sydney Theater Company will revive another Chekhov classic, Uncle Vanya. Completists can check out both this version and Annie Baker’s adaptation at Soho Rep.
July 5-Aug. 5. Lincoln Center, W. 62nd St. & Columbus Ave., lincolncenterfestival.com.

Midtown
Marble Collegiate Church New Work Festival
Entering its second year, The Puzzle, Marble Collegiate Church’s festival of new work, brings together a host of freshly written theater pieces from New York and around the country for a three-week workshop process culminating in a week of plays, musicals and spoken word.
June 25-30; free. Marble Collegiate Church, 29th St. at 5th Ave., marblechurch.org.

Midtown
Signature Theater
In its first season in its new three-theater Midtown home, the Signature Theatre will present Athol Fugard’s My Children in Africa, Will Eno’s Title and Deed, the world premiere of Kenneth Lonergan’s Medieval Deed and Sam Shepard’s Heartless, among others. In addition to the plays, the theater will offer talk-back programs with performers and playwrights as well as pre-show discussions with designers.
Times and dates vary. Signature Theatre, 480 W. 42nd St., signaturetheater.org.

Citywide
New York Musical Theatre Festival
Featuring live music, workshops and full productions of brand-new musicals, the NYMTF has been giving New York audiences a chance to experience exciting musical theater without Broadway price tags (or tourists) since 1994. This year’s lineup is particularly strong, with 30 musicals including A Letter To Harvey Milk, about a butcher sending a letter to Milk; Baby Case, Michael Ogborn’s take on the Lindbergh baby’s disappearance; and Prison Dancer, a show based on the Filipino prisoners who became a worldwide sensation thanks to their YouTube performances.
July 9-29. Various locations, nymf.org.

Citywide
Fringe Fest
Even at 16 years old, this annual marathon of offbeat, cutting-edge theater—which birthed Rent, among other memorable shows—is devoted to the new and the strange. This year’s performances will include From Busk Till Dawn: The Life of an NYC Street Performer, Love Death Brains (A Zombie Musical), Occupy the Constellations: A Collaborative Revolutionary Puppet Tale and, all the way from California, a show called What I Learned From Porn. Not everything you’ll see at the Fringe is great, but it’s always done with humor and spirit, making it more interesting—if not quite as professional—than most other festivals. Aug. 10-26. fringenyc.org.

“I decided then that I wasn’t going to be a history academic. I was going to get into it my own way,” he said.

Decades later, Holzer is one of the country’s leading Lincoln scholars. He has written and edited more than 30 books on Lincoln and the Civil War, has toured the country giving lectures and is co-chair of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

A former press secretary for Bella Abzug and Mario Cuomo, he comes at his topic not just with an

encyclopedic knowledge of all things Lincoln but also with his own experience in politics to lend his insight a little more weight. His interest in Lincoln also informs the décor of his office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is senior vice president of external affairs: Lincoln statues and lithographs are scattered everywhere, and lining the walls are photos of Holzer with politicians, movie stars and authors with whom he has collaborated in his lifelong study of America’s 16th president.

His latest book, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861, was celebrated at a Nov. 10 publication party.

The book chronicles one of the most difficult transitions in American history. The Union was on the verge of collapse, with forces in and outside of Washington hoping to sabotage Lincoln’s presidency. Wild speculations flew back and forth on the new president’s intentions, qualifications and character. Throughout the entire period Lincoln remained silent, making no speeches and issuing very few statements for public consumption, following a deliberate tactic that Lincoln called “masterly inactivity.”

Not only did he face resistance in the South, where state legislatures were moving to secede, but in Washington, several members of the outgoing James Buchanan administration were conspiring against him from within the White House.

The efforts were much more serious, Holzer quipped, than when members of the Clinton administration allegedly removed the “W” keys from White House keyboards while packing up before the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2000.

Thinking about his own history in New York politics, his study of Lincoln and his knowledge of where things are now, Holzer recounted one story from the book where Lincoln traveled to Albany after being elected: “The legislators were all fighting with the governor about who should sit where; who should go to the dinner,” he said. “I mean, nothing has changed!”
Holzer, in an interview before the election, said his book holds several important lessons for the next president who, like Lincoln, will likely be facing a major crisis from the moment he takes office.

“He was the model president-elect,” Holzer said of Lincoln. “What he has is something that people don’t have today, and generally CNN and FOX and blogs make it very difficult to have—and that’s patience,” said Holzer, citing the quality as one of the most important aspects of a president.

Holzer also points to Lincoln’s desire for diversity in his cabinet as a value the next president should look to adopt.

“More than rivals, Lincoln went in a huge way for diversity,” he said. “He would let everybody else squabble and fight, listen to everybody and finally do the decision.”

As for an inaugural address, Holzer noted that Lincoln wrote an angry first draft, excoriating those who wished to expand slavery and delivering an ultimatum to choose “peace or the sword.” But he recommended the next president follow Lincoln’s example of moderating the tone over the course of editing—by the time the final draft was written, Lincoln asked Americans to look to “the better angels of our nature.”

Another key piece of advice from Lincoln, according to Holzer: “Leave your hometown advisers at home.” Lincoln only hired one friend from Springfield when he was elected and rarely heeded that man’s advice. Holzer said presidents like Jimmy Carter, who brought their entire network of advisers from home and tried to transplant them to Washington, tended to face calamitous results.

Finally, Holzer advised, “Stick to the principles that got you elected.”
The next president will have difficulty achieving many elements of his agenda while navigating the fallout from the current economic turmoil. Lincoln’s example of dealing with a crisis greater than any other in American history—while nonetheless holding fast to what had guided him during the campaign—was crucial to his success, Holzer said.

The timing of the release is fortuitous—Holzer worked on the book for four years, aiming for Lincoln President-Elect to hit the shelves when it could have maximum impact.

“I always hoped that it would come out when there was a president-elect,” he said. Though a committed Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Holzer is comforted by the fact that the new president-elect is a Lincoln admirer.

“Obama loves Lincoln,” he said. “He quotes him all the time.”