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Bob Avian, Broadway Choreographer, 83

Avian co-choreographed A Chorus Line with Michael Bennett, and choreographed Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard. He "directed a 2006 revival of A Chorus Line that ran on Broadway for almost two years, as well as productions of that show in London in 2013 and at New York City Center in 2018. He shared Tony Awards for choreography with Mr....

Walter Bernstein, Blacklisted And Celebrated Filmmaker, 101

Bernstein's "career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, The Front." - The New York Times

Junior Mance, ‘One Of The Most Swinging And Utterly Delightful Pianists In Jazz,’ 92

Mance was "a buoyant, bluesy jazz pianist who worked with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley and Dinah Washington, before establishing himself as the leader of his own groups." - The New York Times

Larry King, Interviewer Of Darn Near Everyone, 87

King "shot the breeze with presidents and psychics, movie stars and malefactors — anyone with a story to tell or a pitch to make — in a half-century on radio and television, including 25 years as the host of CNN’s globally popular Larry King Live." - The New York Times

Why Storm The Capitol? “I Came To See The Art!”

“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

The Lonely, Mysterious Death Of A Science Fiction Pioneer

"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...

Meet Maya Phillips, The NYT’s Newest Critic-At-Large

"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...

Roger Mandle, Who Ran RISD And Co-Founded Qatar’s Museums, Dead At 79

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...

How Amanda Gorman Became Amanda Gorman And Poet Laureate For The Inauguration

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...

Remembering Director Mike Nichols

A vocal opponent of the auteur theory, which gives directors primary credit for the films they make, Nichols treated cinema as a fundamentally collaborative art and never sought to impose a uniform directorial approach on his work, which was unshowy, even self-effacing. “It’s not a filmmaker’s job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way...

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto Reveals Second Cancer Diagnosis

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

Trump Pardons Disgraced Art Dealer

"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

Trump’s NEA Chair Departs As Biden Administration Arrives

"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)

Exit Interview: Architecture Critic Blair Kamin

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...

Longtime NPR Arts Editor Tom Cole Retires

"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

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