People

“Faced with the photo evidence, Pham then allegedly admitted to climbing over torn-down fences to get inside. But still, he insisted his reasons were benign: He just wanted the rare opportunity to view ‘historical art,’ investigators said.” – Washington Post

“This past Saturday, about a dozen people from across the United States and Canada held a Zoom memorial for a man whose remains have been lying in an unmarked grave in Nova Scotia since last spring. He was Charles R. Saunders, and his lonely death in May belied his status as a foundational figure in a literary genre known as sword and soul.” – The New York Times

“There have been a lot of bad things happening this year, obviously. But the good thing about being a critic during this pandemic is that it forces us to be flexible in a way that a lot of critics may have been resistant to. I think it’s really essential that we don’t lock critics in this very strict, old-fashioned idea of what criticism is and should be. The pandemic has emphasized that there should be a broadening of ideas of how the arts interact, and in theatre, what the art form even is. That’s really intimidating but also exciting, and I’m fortunate to be stepping into this space on such a large platform at such a strange, experimental time.” – American Theatre

As director of the Toldeo Museum of Art, he organized a pathbreaking (and record-breaking) El Greco exhibition. As president of the Rhode Island School of Design, he built a new museum and quadrupled the endowment. And when a member of the Qatari royal family was determined to turn Doha into an international art destination, she hired him to direct the Qatar Museums Authority, where he oversaw the new Museum of Islamic Art (designed by I.M. Pei) and National Museum of Qatar (designed by Jean Nouvel). – The New York Times

Her precocious path was paved with both opportunities and challenges, an early passion for language and the diverse influences of her native city. Gorman grew up near Westchester but spent the bulk of her time around the New Roads School, a socioeconomically diverse private school in Santa Monica. Her mother, Joan Wicks, teaches middle school in Watts. Shuttling among the neighborhoods gave Gorman a window onto the deep inequities that divide ZIP Codes. – Los Angeles Times

The Oscar-winning electronic music legend was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, though he was back to making records by 2017 and the disease had gone into remission. This week, however, Sakamoto announced that he is being treated for rectal cancer. – Pitchfork

“Helly Nahmad, a member of the Nahmad family dynasty and the son of art collector David Nahmad, was caught running an illegal gambling ring worth $100 million out of his apartment in Trump Tower in New York. He owns the entirety of the building’s 51st floor, which reportedly cost a collective $21 million.” – Artnet

“National Endowment for the Arts chairwoman Mary Anne Carter has resigned as head of the federal agency, telling her staff in a letter sent Friday that ‘a new team should have a new leader.'” – MSN (Washington Post)

It’s really, really important to have critics who, at their best, can deliver lighting bolts that say, “This is a horrible idea. Don’t do it.” “Don’t put a Holiday Inn glass box on top of Chicago’s Union Station.” (It didn’t happen.) Or, ‘The lakefront in Chicago is divided by the chasm of race, address it.” Over the last 22 years since I wrote that series on the lakefront, it has really changed. – Fast Company

“That is a typical Tom Cole piece, which is to say it’s not typical at all. For three decades, Tom has positioned himself as an enabler for reporters interested in exploring fascinating corners of the arts – a lost era of Shanghai jazz, say, that NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang discovered meant different things to different audiences.” – NPR

“A low-key businessman who started as a movie usher, [he] presided for more than a decade over the nation’s oldest and largest theatrical company, an archipelago of 17 Broadway theaters, many of them historic landmarks; six Off Broadway stages; and other properties, including a theater in Philadelphia.” – The New York Times

“He made his operatic debut in 1975 when he directed a stripped-back Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House. The production was so successful that it was subsequently mounted by Paris Opera and La Scala, as well as being seen in Tokyo and Los Angeles. So began a distinguished career spanning five decades. Though Moshinsky was especially renowned for his interpretations of Verdi, his work encompassed a large, diverse range of repertoire.” – Limelight (Australia)

It is impossible to know what drives a person to suicide. But in his final months, his mental state took a turn for the worse as pressure grew to finish the project and stress mounted over costs, according to dozens of interviews with friends, family and colleagues. – The New York Times

Long before he murdered Lana Clarkson, it was clear Phil Spector (who died over the weekend) was not a good guy. “Ronnie Spector’s 1990 autobiography Be My Baby laid bare the full horror of their marriage: the house surrounded by barbed wire and guard dogs; the threats to kill her, either himself or via a hitman; the gold-plated, glass-topped coffin he installed in the basement and threatened to display her body in after she was murdered.” And oh yes, the Wall of Sound – Phil Spector transformed the sound of popular music. – The Guardian (UK)

The store, which has endured through the creation of Germany, two world wars, Communism, and reunification, not to mention Amazon, was a family affair. “Weyhe was a lifeline of sorts to her customers. She traveled far and wide after East Germans were generally allowed to leave for tourism, bringing back her infectious enthusiasm for the outside world. ‘She brought a little bit of the world to Salzwedel,’ Ms. Lemm said.” – The New York Times

“Kim’s drops can seem to sit miraculously atop his raw canvases or be in the midst of gliding down them, leaving a trail of moisture. They glimmer with light and cast shadows, and while vividly present, they are always on the verge of evanescing.” – The New York Times

Bateson, an anthropologist like her famous parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, had a busy and famously documented life. “Still, it wasn’t her babyhood, her lineage or her scholarship — an expert on classical Arabic poetry, she was as polymathic as her mother — that brought Dr. Bateson renown; it was her 1989 book Composing a Life, an examination of the stop-and-start nature of women’s lives and their adaptive responses — ‘life as an improvisatory art,’ as she wrote.” – The New York Times

“Before Johnson, in instances wherein the tuba was part of a jazz arrangement, it was typically confined to bass parts. Johnson demonstrated a prowess that allowed him to play melodic lines, even lead parts. … He was a featured player in the Mingus, Carla Bley, and Gil Evans big bands; he also put in time with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra (of which Bley was the music director). In 1975 he became a founding member of the Saturday Night Live Band.” – JazzTimes

“A New Yorker who performed with Martha Graham’s dance company, often partnering Graham herself, Cohan moved to London where, in 1967, he became the first artistic director of the venue The Place, as well as the London Contemporary Dance School and the company London Contemporary Dance Theatre. His partnership with the founder of those organisations, Robin Howard, changed the face of dance in the UK and brought growing audiences to bold new explorations of movement that stretched beyond ballet.” He was still teaching and choreographing at age 93. – The Guardian

“Casual of gesture but deeply focused in demeanor, [he] had an understated style that could nonetheless hold the spotlight in trio settings, or fit slyly into [Maria] Schneider’s 18-piece big band. In many ways, his playing reflected the Romantic, floating manner of his first jazz influence, Bill Evans. But his off-kilter style as both a player and a composer also called back to two of his more rugged bebop-era influences: Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk.” – The New York Times

Known for a 12-volume autobiography and more than a dozen more books, many of which got their start as New Yorker articles (he was a staff writer for decades), he had a carefully honed prose style full of vivid description — despite the fact that he had been blind from age 3. (His sense of hearing was said to be extraordinary.) – The New York Times

“Ms. Loud was a California mother of five. She drank, she plotted her divorce, she adored, and accepted, her openly gay son. She did it all in Santa Barbara and all on camera — in 1973. Loving, boisterous, witty, resilient and sometimes angry and hurt, she did not act like most women on television at the time. But she was ostensibly not acting at all. She was the first reality television star on the first reality show” — An American Family, aired on PBS — “and she paid a price for breaking new ground.” – The New York Times

He reflects on his career and (in typical fashion) leaves readers with a basketful of music, book and video recommendations. – Chicago Tribune

The MacArthur Fellow, who has also won the National Book Award and lives with her partner and two children in Brooklyn, is building Baldwin Arts, an artists colony for writers, composers, and visual artists of color. Lots of free time there, right? “We all find our space. In my bubble, I’m working on a book or a screenplay, going back and forth between the two. I really do try to find that sweet spot, those four or five hours a day of uninterrupted writing time.” – The Cut

Johnson, who was also known for her public housing project designs, became famous for her “large-scale public projects, which often involved environmental remediation. For the Mystic River State Reservation, a nature preserve in Eastern Mass., a commission she received in the 1970s, she transformed a toxic landfill into a public park. The John F. Kennedy Park along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., had once been an oil-soaked storage site for train cars before Ms. Johnson’s firm took it on in the early 80s.” – The New York Times

Apted’s series – the latest, 63-Up, came out in 2019 – was only one project from the director of many movies, including Gorillas in the Mist and The World Is Not Enough. But the British director referred to the Up documentaries as “the most important thing I have ever done.” Last year, he said that “The series was an attempt to do a long view of English society, … The class system needed a kick up the backside.” – The Guardian (UK)

“Mr. Sheehan, the son of impoverished Irish-immigrant dairy farmers, graduated from Harvard University and served in the Army before joining the United Press International wire service. Reporting from Saigon in the early 1960s, he became known as one of the “fearless threesome” of Vietnam War correspondents.” – The New York Times

Blame TikTok and the pathologies of social media in the age of fake news. A couple of (so-called) satirical videos were posted last year on the app; teens picked up on them and made their own vids joining in; as #helenkellerisfake and #helenkellerhateclub got millions of views, the facts that Keller was world-famous for what she achieved and died only 53 years ago got lost. (“Whaddya mean, this blind and deaf chick went to college and wrote books and flew a plane? Puh-leeze lol lol.”) Now that the grownups have found out about this nonsense, though, the pushback has been righteous. – Newsweek