Top gallery curator among six victims of New York rail crash

 
Victim: Gallery curator Walter Liedtke
Daniel Bates|Rashid Razaq5 February 2015

Television historian Simon Schama today led tributes to one of the world’s top gallery curators who was among six victims of a horrific rail crash 20 miles north of New York.

Walter Liedtke died when a packed commuter train smashed into a Jeep Cherokee stuck on the line in Valhalla at 6.30pm on Monday, sparking a fireball. Mr Liedtke, 69, who was married, got his doctorate at the Courtauld Institute in London before moving back to Manhattan where he became the curator for European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Over a three-decade career he organised major exhibitions of Dutch and Flemish artists including Rembrandt. His show Vermeer and the Delft School was so popular at the National Gallery in 2001 that the museum had to extend its opening hours. Mr Schama wrote on Twitter: “Devastated to hear of Walter Liedtke’s death in Metro-North train crash. Community of Dutch art history suffers irreparable loss.”

Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, described Mr Liedtke as “my colleague and friend” and said that it was a “tragic loss”.

Fifteen people were injured as the collision sent the electric rail scything through the front carriage of the train, which was heading north at 60mph, and the train windows melted in the fire. It was the deadliest crash in the history of the Metro-North Railway, which runs out of Grand Central Station.

The driver of the 4x4 has been named as mother-of-three Ellen Brody, 49, who worked at a jewellery shop.

Co-worker Virginia Shasha said: “She was a lover of people and of life. She had a heart of gold. She always tried to bring out the best in people.”

Ms Brody’s children’s world was “completely shattered”, she said.

The train passengers killed included father-of-two Eric Vandercar, 53, senior managing director at Mesirow Financial, Robert Dirks, 36, a research scientist at D.E. Shaw Research, and Joseph Nadol, 42, a managing director and analyst for JPMorgan.

The National Transport Safety Board will examine the train’s “black box”.

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