Category: people

As James Cuno prepares take over the leadership of the Art Institute of Chicago, he faces not only the scrutiny of the local critics, but the pressure of leading a major art institution at a time when much of the industry is looking for a way out of the “blockbuster” trend, without risking irrelevancy in the eys of the public. Cuno seems unfazed by the challenge: “Increasingly, people come to museums at different times of their life. We shouldn’t only think of the learning museum as something for young people. Increasingly it’s for older people. Our generations have been aging differently. So we need to be responsive to young and mature and senior learners as much as anything.”

Unless you’re a real amateur film buff, the odds are that you’ve never hard of Sidney N. Laverents. But as filmmakers go, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more influential or prolific amateur. “Now 95, Mr. Laverents is a distinctively American artist: a rec-room tinkerer with the can-do optimism of someone who got through the Depression and found comfort in the suburbs. Following his own whims rather than any cultural movement, he turned himself from a one-man band into a one-man independent movie studio.” This week, 34 years after the release of his award-winning special-effects feature “Multiple SIDosis,” Laverents has earned an L.A. retrospective.

Two new Ken Kesey books have recently been posthumously released, begging the question of exactly what Kesey could have accomplished in life, had he just been able to focus on writing, rather than on the drugs which so many of his contemporaries insist were the source of much of his creativity. “When Kesey forsook literature in 1964 to become a man of letters—LSD—did he blow it? Or did he ignite a refining fire that still burns bright at the heart of every rave in America? Did drugs make him, or undo him?”

Many assumed that George Plimpton’s death would see his beloved Paris Review come to a quiet end, or at least that the small, influential literary journal would be transformed into something unrecognizable to the New York literati who are so devoted to it. But new editor Brigid Hughes has no plans to change the magazine, and insists that Plimpton’s rather complicated legacy was actually quite simple, as far as the Review was concerned: “I don’t think it needs to change. The goal is to publish good writing. I intend to do that.”

Captain Kangaroo (a.k.a. Bob Keeshan) died this weekend at age 76. “Keeshan had many talents, and he had no edge. Having no edge is an admirable quality, but one that almost never flies today. It allowed men (and a few women) like Captain Kangaroo to simply exude an almost suspicious amount of niceness. Yet there was nothing to suspect… In a world designed to be noisy, he built a show around calm. (Except when Ping-Pong balls fell from the ceiling. And when Mr. Green Jeans’s contraptions fell apart.)”

“The photographer Helmut Newton transformed fashion into a form of erotica. With his long-legged models shot from below and lit like goddesses carved out of stone, Newton’s vision of women was both threatening and compelling. Through his lens, sexuality was transformed into power. Newton, 83, died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.”

In his intensely personal monologues, Spalding Gray talked incessantly about death, and his lifelong obsession with it. With a tone alternately fatalistic and defiant, he spoke of suicide, of incurable illness, and of the various ways in which a human being can slip away from life. Gray always seemed decidedly unbalanced, but his monologues were cathartic in a way which always made one hope that he was exorcising his demons as he laid them before an audience. Now, two weeks after vanishing without a trace from his New York home, the horrible ironies of Gray’s life and work are on display, his uncertain absence a tragically appropriate denouement to a career built on pain.

The curator of drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art is leaving town to take up a similar position at tghe Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Carter Foster’s resume reads like a listing of the top American art museums, and he was celebrated in Cleveland for his success in acquiring new works for an already impressive collection, and for curating several important shows in his eight years in Ohio. The move from Cleveland to LACMA means that Foster will have a much larger staff and more exhibition space, but LA’s collection is nowhere near as complete as the one he is leaving behind. The CMA has not yet decided whether Foster will be replaced.

When most actors begin to talk about politics, most people roll their eyes. But Vanessa Redgrave is a different matter entirely: “On stage and on screen, she has worked on the edge, never shying away from a tough or controversial role… Through the years, her often-groundbreaking performances in Shakespeare, Chekhov, Noel Coward and Tennessee Williams have left an indelible mark on theatre history… She has always been a passionate, tireless activist who has never spared herself to advance causes such as the Palestinians, the people of Kosovo, the atrocities in Chechnya and threats to democracy at home and abroad. One of her current preoccupations is the situation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the Americans are holding more than 600 ‘enemy combatants’ without charge or trial.”

“Ann Miller, the long-legged actress and dancer whose machinegun taps won her stardom during the golden age of movie musicals, died Thursday of lung cancer. She was 84.”