Otto Hermann Kahn - Patron of The Arts

Patron of The Arts

An extremely wealthy financier, Kahn supported artists such as Hart Crane, George Gershwin and Arturo Toscanini. He was also smitten with Hollywood, to which Kuhn Loeb provided much commercial support and Kahn, personal support. In her second full-length film, Be Yourself, Fanny Brice sang a song that mentioned Kahn: "Is something the matter with Otto Kahn, or is something wrong with me? I wrote a note and told him what a star I would make. He sent it back and marked it "Opened by mistake."

Kahn was chairman of the New York committee of the Shakespeare Tercentenary (1916). He was elected to honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity by the Fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory in 1917. He was chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York and of the French Theatre of New York and a founder and later treasurer of the New Theatre Company.

Otto's son, Roger Wolfe Kahn, was a popular jazz musician and band leader of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Kahn's daughter, Margaret "Nin" Dorothy Wolff Kahn, married John Barry Ryan II and was a New York society doyenne and benefactor of the Metropolitan Opera.