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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

Philip J. Smith, Chairman Of Shubert Organization, Dead Of COVID At 89

"A low-key businessman who started as a movie usher, 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

Opera Director Elijah Moshinsky Dead Of COVID At 75

"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...

The Quiet Tragedy Of The Man Who Oversaw New York’s New Train Station

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

Dealing With The Legacy Of Abuser, Murderer, And Music Producer Phil Spector

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...

Helga Weyhe, Germany’s Oldest Bookseller, 98

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...

Artist Kim Tschang-Yuel, 91, Painter Of Water – And The Trauma Of War

"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

Mary Catherine Bateson, Author Of ‘Composing A Life’ And Daughter Of Margaret Mead, 81

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...

Howard Johnson, Pioneering Virtuoso Of Jazz Tuba, Dead At 73

"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...

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