Howard Lutnick and The Gates of Hell

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G'day, Matt Bevan here, and we've got a little bonus episode of If You're Listening For You Today.

While we're making this show, sometimes we come across a story that's so weird and interesting, but it's not entirely relevant to the story that we're trying to tell in the main episode.

Now, these stories generally end up on the cutting room floor on a Wednesday afternoon before we publish.

But this particular story I haven't been able to stop thinking about all weekend.

It's about the disaster of 9-11, the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo and a mysterious lost artwork.

There's a surprise appearance from the Chinese premiere and an ethical conundrum I can't quite figure out how to solve.

So I wanted to record a little bonus episode for you with my producer Cara.

G'day Cara.

Hello.

How's it going?

I'm well.

I feel like this episode certainly haunted you like the ghost of Christmas past over the weekend.

So very excited to finally talk about it.

You are forced to listen to me talk about this because you're the one who cut it out of the main episode.

So,

you know,

it was like a couple of paragraphs in the main episode, but now you're going to have to listen to me talk for like half an hour.

So, you know, buckle up.

We're going to do it all over again.

It's going to be way worse.

So tell me the story, please.

Let's do it for real this time.

Okay, so it's about Howard Luttnick.

Obviously, in our previous episode, which was all about Howard Luttnick's backstory leading up to him becoming the U.S.

Commerce Secretary and Donald Trump's tariff czar, we talked a lot about his tragic backstory, going back to his time as the CEO of the financial services company Cander Fitzgerald, which had offices on the 101st to 105th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

And

on that morning, he lost basically two-thirds of his workforce who were killed in that attack.

It was this absolutely horrific and tragic thing that happened to Howard Luttnick and happened to the 658 staff members and their families on 9-11.

That whole story, obviously, we talk about in a lot of detail in the real episode.

But I want to talk about something that was inside the offices of his company, Cantor Fitzgerald, that day.

Yes, and this has been the big thing.

It's like, how do you do the 9-11 episode and then have something that seems like a bigger story than 9-11?

And this was what we kind of were grappling with: is that, you know, it was very much overshadowed by the tragedy of the real story.

And obviously, you know, what we're going to be talking about here is 19th-century sculpture, which seems very minor, obviously, compared to the absolute horror and tragedy and ramifications of that day.

But it's a fascinating story because

in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices on that day were a whole bunch of original sculptures in bronze by the 19th century French artist Auguste Rodin.

who was an unbelievably famous artist and very well known.

People will know his most famous artwork, obviously, is The Thinker, which is, you know, that iconic image of a man sitting with his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist,

you know, thinking.

He's thinking.

The iconic image of a thinking person.

You know, we see it everywhere.

A 70-centimeter version of that statue was in the lobby of the Canter Fitzgerald offices that day, along with a whole bunch of other artworks by Rodin.

And the reason those artworks got there and what happened to them on that day is this most extraordinary story.

I mean, I guess the main question I have is: like, this guy that collects Rodin's, I mean, we should all be so lucky that we have the capacity to collect that many artworks.

But what can you tell me about Bernie Cantor as a guy?

Yeah, so Bernie Cantor was the founder of the Cantor Fitzgerald firm that Howard Luttnick took over from him.

He was Howard Luttnick's mentor, and

he was an interesting guy.

He started his financial services company in the mid 1940s.

And in the midst of him starting his company, he one day had a bit a bit of time spare.

And so he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And what he saw there really changed him.

And, you know, it's actually interesting because I kind of know what happened to him there because I had sort of a similar experience to him in 2004.

So this is a crazy story.

So in 2004, my parents took me and my sister on a holiday to Italy, and we went to Florence, and we went to the Arts Academy where Michelangelo's David is, right?

Yes.

And so we go into the giant hall that Michelangelo's David is in.

And if you've seen Michelangelo's David in person, you'll know there's something about that statue that is just unlike any other sculpture in the world.

You look at it and you just go, oh my goodness,

how is that rock somehow alive?

Yes, fully.

We arrive at this place and we're in there and it's, you know, we're trying to take photos of it.

The woman's like, don't take any photos.

There's like security guards there stopping everyone from taking photos.

And so we're just sort of sitting there marveling at the statue when suddenly

the big doors to the gallery burst open.

These aren't like the doors that the public comes through.

These are like the big doors to the street

open

and in comes 50 people.

It turns out who it is.

It's the Chinese prime minister.

Okay.

The Chinese premier at the time.

His name was Wen Jia Bao and he was visiting Florence and he wanted to see the Michelangelo's David and I happened to be there when he arrived and he had all these, you know, obviously TV cameras and photographers were coming in with him, taking all these photos of him, taking all these photos of the statue.

So, of course, I whip out my camera.

I'm like, well, the lady can't stop me now.

And I took a bunch of photos of both him and the statue.

And then he left.

You know, he was only there for a couple of minutes.

He obviously seen what he came to see, and then he went back out through the big doors.

And it was only once he'd gone back out through the big doors that I realized sort of what was near those big doors, which were

these partially completed sculptures of Michelangelo.

Sculptures that they're generally described as trapped sculptures because they're only partially emerge from the marble.

And what Bernie Cantor saw that day when he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was Auguste Rodin's tribute to those partially completed Michelangelo statues.

The crazy thing for me is that I too was actually in Florence in 2004.

What?

And I also saw David, and I had a similarly kind of biblical experience seeing David.

No way.

It's weird.

I mean, I wasn't there, obviously, on that exact day, but I was there.

And I mean, I guess the difference between us and Bernie Cantor was that he was able to kind of look at the sculpture when he went in and say, you know what?

That's what I need in my house, or that's what I need in my workplace.

And then he kind of actioned that.

But I had a really similar feeling where you just see something and you're like, there's a softness to this marble sculpture that's made of rock, yet I can recognize David.

He's right there.

He's huge.

There's humanity in a rock.

you

possibly do that?

That's so funny.

You, me, and Wen Jiaobao.

It seems like you and I had a more profound experience than Wen Jiaobao did.

Hey, Mr.

Night.

He was in and out real fast.

So,

you know.

Obviously, by this time, Rodin isn't alive anymore, but there are casts of his works that people can commission to get made in all different sizes.

So how, who are you calling first on the phone to get these?

How was Bernie doing it?

How did he actually kind of decide, I want Rodins and then get that done?

Well, they belong to the French government.

So, you know, a lot of his work was commissioned by the French government.

He worked very closely with the French government.

And then when he died, he gave all of his casts and his, you know,

partially complete sculptures and all every everything in his workshop he gave to the French government, which led to the creation of the Musée Rodin,

which is what became known as the Iris and B.

Gerald Gerald Cantor Foundation did all their work with the Musée Rodin in France.

Rodin has all these big and small versions, and Bernie Cantor was a collector of all of them, particularly the sculptures that Rodin made as part of his masterwork,

which was he called the Gates of Hell.

I think I forced you to look at some pictures of the gates of hell, Cara, so you know what I'm talking about.

I have seen the gates of hell.

You'll know that

it's a massive sculpture.

It's six meters high.

It's these doors

that have all of these people that are being tortured in hell, basically, all over the gates.

The Thinker, which we all know so well, is attached to the front of it, just above the middle of

the doors.

And then on top of it, there is another sculpture which became famous on its own called the Three Shades, which is three versions of

a man standing in a really awkward pose, but standing on top of the sculpture.

And so Rodin never actually cast the Gates of Hell in his lifetime, but he made his living out of selling different sized versions of the Thinker and the Three Shades, which was the people on the top, and a whole bunch of other figures that he had crafted to be part of the Gates of Hell.

But Cantor, with all of his money,

managed to commission a casting of the real version of the Gates of Hell in bronze.

And so that's one of the artworks that he and his wife collected as part of their massive collection of Rodins.

All right, so Bernie amasses this huge 750-piece collection, some of which are stored on the levels of the building in the World Trade Centers that they occupy.

And then 9-11 happens.

It's a tragedy.

And they thought the works were lost.

Yes, well, they did.

I mean, I mean, how could they not be?

Really?

You know, we've all seen the pictures of the destruction and the horror that was ground zero after the collapse of these enormous buildings.

And there was, in fact, an enormous amount of artworks inside of the World Trade Center that were all presumed to have been destroyed.

And then, after

the disaster, a woman who was who had previously been the curator of the Cantor collection inside of the Cantor Fitzgerald offices, they had enough artworks that they needed a professional curator to look after them.

She's watching TV and there was a story about, you know, basically the sifting through of the rubble that was being done at the landfill on Staten Island.

And she's watching the coverage of it and she's like, you know, horrible disaster dust.

That's the three three shades she sees the sculpture the three shades so that's the three figures that were on top of the great the gates of hell clearly heavily damaged but enough intact to identify them on her TV screen that's crazy and so then people from Canter Fitzgerald go down to the the landfill there in Staten Island and they find like there's a demountable building

where

the people who had been going through the rubbish had been basically stacking up weird things that they found.

There was part of an aeroplane engine, which is extraordinary, and the three shades leaning up against the wall of a demountable building in Staten Island.

And as they went sifting through, they also found a sculpture that Rodin had done of a hand.

which three of the fingers had snapped off of this hand, but it was still recognisably a Rodin.

That statue is still sitting on Howard Lutnick, the now Commerce Secretary's desk, all these years later.

I haven't been able to figure out exactly what happened to the Three Shades, but he said at the time that he would be selling the Three Shades in order to raise funds for the families who had lost loved ones in that disaster.

The mystery and the thing that I'm obsessed with is that there then subsequently emerged a story that in the the rubble in Manhattan, so still, you know, when the rubble had not been transported to the landfill, a firefighter had found the thinker.

And there is a photograph from December of 2001 of a firefighter standing next to the thinker inside a firehouse in New York City.

But then

the thinker disappeared and it has not been seen since as far far as I can tell.

There was an investigation by the New York City Fire Department.

I haven't been able to find out the results of that investigation but as far as I'm aware there is a bronze original cast of the Finker sitting in the living room of someone around New York, possibly a firefighter.

who took it home after the disaster.

We don't want to defame this firefighter either, but that's it's likely.

I mean, why wouldn't you, you know?

It was a tragedy for the firefighters as well.

So who's going to call up that guy?

Who's going to go to his house and drag it back?

But it's still fascinating to me because since then, similar busts of the thinker have been sold for $10 million.

Wow.

And one would assume that a version of The Thinker that fell a hundred floors and survived the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11

would be an extremely well, that is a unique thing.

And

it's sitting somewhere that no one really knows.

And this for me, you know, sort of starts sort of an ethical dilemma of a sort where

I really want to make a podcast series where we find that sculpture, you know, where we find the thinker that fell through the gates of hell, you might say, and survived and is now sitting in someone's, you know, on someone's mantelpiece somewhere.

However, as you say, do we really want to go out there and

identify

name and shame?

Yeah, this guy who I don't think needs to be shamed.

It's a purely curiosity.

I don't see this as a true crime situation.

He's a hero.

Yeah, after what New York City firefighters went through on that day and in the weeks and months and years afterwards, suffering the serious health effects of working at Ground Zero.

I certainly don't think that this person is a villain.

No.

The thing about the sculpture is that, like, what's going to happen to it in the future?

We're now 24 years on

from 9-11.

Is that a family heirloom now?

You know, that will just be passed down through a family.

What happens in 50 years' time

when the person who originally took home the sculpture is gone, and their family is like, Well, what do we do with this potentially multi-million dollar thing that is sitting in our house?

Do we just give it back to the Cantor Foundation?

Do we try and sell it on the black market?

I feel like there's going to be an episode of Antiques Roadshow 100 years from now where, like,

an unknowing person brings it in and is like, hey, I have this junk in my house from my like great-great-granddad or whatever.

Is this worth anything?

What is

it?

It's a bit scratched out, it's missing a hand, whatever.

But like, is this worth anything?

I feel like that's going to be the final episode of the podcast.

So I

put this out

as an ethical dilemma on James Valentine's show on 702 ABC Radio Sydney.

And

his listeners gave us some interesting advice, which

basically

the upshot of which is that maybe we just go into this offering a cash reward.

I don't know whose cash that's going to be, but anyway,

you know, do we contact the Cantor Foundation

and sort of do a co-production somehow with them?

Look, there is an outside chance, though, that one of the people listening to the show might have some sort of lead.

So,

if you have a lead and you've got a lead, please.

That's fair.

Because I think that's going to be the difference on whether we make the show or not.

I mean, it'd be an incredible thing to find.

I kind of like also the idea that it's just sitting in a very normal person's house.

Yep.

Just on a, you know, a kitchen table next to a fruit bowl, you know?

You know, someone's

rent-controlled apartment,

you know, on the upper west side.

Just on that bookcase, next to some like plants that are kind of dying.

Just chill, you know, it's low-key.

Maybe, maybe holding a door open.

Exactly.

It's what Rodan would have wanted, you know?

Yeah.

It feels postmodern.

Yeah.

But that's the story that I have been able to get out of my head.

Incredible.

Thank you, Cara, for listening.

Thank you so much for having me chat this story through with you.

No worries.

And look, to be honest, had you not cut it out of the episode, we wouldn't have been able to go into it in nearly as much depth.

Exactly.

It would have been a much longer episode.

It would have been.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right.

We're just going to pause this thing that's about tariffs and about economics for a half-hour discussion about 19th century sculpture.

We'll get back to Trump and tariffs later on.

We come across a lot of these stories while we're making, if you're listening, so yeah, we'll try when we can to not just leave them on the cutting room floor and I'll force Kara to listen to me

talk about it at length when we have the time.

We'll be back on Thursday with a regular episode, which is about India and Pakistan.

See you then.