If it had happened in a radio or television studio, it might have gone well. But having an audience turns out to have been a bad idea. (And some ill-advised moves by either Gay or her management didn’t help.) – New York Magazine
Category: people
Henry Wollman Bloch, Art Philanthropist And Co-Founder Of H&R Block, Dead At 96
The primary beneficiary of Bloch’s largesse has been Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: he spent three years as its board chairman, he and his wife are the name donors on the museum’s 2007 expansion and its 2015-17 renovation, and at the same time the couple gave a collection of 29 major Impressionist paintings to NAMA. – ARTnews
Study: People Don’t Empathize Because It’s Too Much Work
“There is a common assumption that people stifle feelings of empathy because they could be depressing or costly. But we found that people primarily just don’t want to make the mental effort to feel empathy toward others, even when it involves feeling positive emotions.” – Pacific Standard
Soprano Heather Harper, 88
“She graced the concert and opera stages of the world in roles that ranged from Ellen Orford in Britten’s Peter Grimes – where her sympathy for the character drew a near-definitive portrayal – to the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier.” – The Guardian
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Extraordinary Female Iranian Artist, Dead At 96
John Coltrane’s Appeal: He Was An Obsessive Creative.
Coltrane is the archetypal creative obsessive intent on finding unheard approaches to the building blocks of music, from the arc of his melodies to the rhythmic drive of his solos to the harmonic framework for his songs. – Times Literary Supplement
Jayne Wrightsman, Grande Dame Benefactor Of The Arts Of New York, Has Died At 99
Wrightsman, like her husband before her, was a big donor and a trustee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “While giving millions to buy art and refurbish galleries, her involvement was often more personal. She spent many days walking through the galleries, examining paintings and artifacts, talking to curators, and analyzing the museum’s artistic needs.” – The New York Times
Director John Singleton Is In Intensive Care After A ‘Mild’ Stroke
The director is most known for the 1991 film Boyz N the Hood, but he’s also a producer and screenwriter whose films include 2 Fast 2 Furious, Shaft, and the documentary LA Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later. – Los Angeles Times
‘A Republic Of Readers’: Mexico’s New Chief Literary Minister (Yes) Is A Bomb-Thrower Who Aims To Transform Its Book Industry
The Fondo de Cultura Económica is a huge government-funded publishing house, influential throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and its boss basically is Mexico’s minister of literature. And the man whom populist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador chose for the job, famous radical author Paco Ignacio Taibo II, “is a full-time provocateur … imagine a somewhat younger Noam Chomsky being appointed US Secretary of State, and you’ll get the drift.” – The Nation
Turns Out Walt Whitman Was Pretty Racist — Should He Be #Cancelled? (No, Here’s A Better Idea)
“Like many white intellectuals, Whitman seems to have been seduced by the proliferation of racist pseudo-science in the post-Civil War era, … [and his] racism was not limited to black people, but also extended to Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.” So should we put Whitman’s writing back on the shelf? Lavelle Porter argues that “there is no better place to look for nuanced critical engagement with Whitman’s complicated legacy than in the work of black intellectuals who have talked back to Whitman.” – JSTOR Daily