President Biden briefly stopped in Manhattan Monday to attend a memorial service for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s late father Donald at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A source told The Post that guests mingled in the Met’s Temple of Dendur before a service in the museum’s 700-seat auditorium, where speakers remembered the late financier and arts patron.
The White House kept the purpose of Biden’s visit to New York City under wraps until his motorcade arrived at the museum — leading to apparently false word reaching some New York City workers that he was there for a fundraiser supporting Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were invited to the memorial service, but did not attend, sources said.
Biden’s motorcade arrived just before 11 a.m. and departed about 90 minutes later for a return trip to Washington, where he’s expected to call for a windfall tax on oil profits before hosting a Halloween trick-or-treat event on the White House lawn.
Donald Blinken died Sept. 22 at age 96.
President Biden will be attending a private memorial service in New York before returning to the White House in Washington, DC. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The White House kept the purpose of Biden’s visit to New York City under wraps. APThe elder Blinken was a private equity tycoon who served as director of the firm Warburg Pincus — before going on to secure President Clinton’s nod to be ambassador to Hungary, where he served between 1994 and 1997.
The late ambassador was a well-known admirer of the abstract painter Mark Rothko and donated lavishly to the Met, which has a gallery named after the secretary of state’s father and stepmother, Vera.
Marine One, with President Biden on board, approaches the Wall Street landing zone in Lower Manhattan on October 31, 2022. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty ImagesSpeakers at the memorial service included members of the US business, cultural and diplomatic elite, according to a program shared with The Post.
In addition to Antony Blinken, speakers were expected to include Met director Max Hollein, arts dealer Arne Glimcher, New York Philharmonic CEO Deborah Borda, Warburg Pincus cofounder John Vogelstein, former deputy secretary of state Clifton Wharton, Estée Lauder billionaire Ronald Lauder and former ambassador to Macedonia Philip Reeker.
Donald Blinken was born in Yonkers in 1925 to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Europe. His father Maurice was born in Kyiv, the capital of present Ukraine, to Yiddish author Meir Blinken, who also immigrated to the US.
Donald Blinken is responsible for many works by Rothko — known for his rectangular blocks of color — appearing in museums.
Blinken met the artist in 1956. After Rothko’s death in 1970 it was Blinken, as president of the Mark Rothko Foundation, who oversaw the disbursement of 1,000 of the painter’s works to 30 museums, according to a profile in Art News.
“Almost 300 paintings and works on paper went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where Blinken had once served as a trustee. Others went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim Museum,” the profile said.
The White House and State Department did not issue press releases or provide other guidance to the press regarding the memorial service, though the White House did confirm Biden’s participation shortly after it was first reported by The Post.
Antony Blinken, an alum of the Dalton School near the Met, also was raised by his step-father Samuel Pisar, a Polish Holocaust survivor whose story he told last year during his Senate confirmation hearing. Pisar died in 2015.
