Category: people

“More than being Dominican, more than being an immigrant, more, even, than being of African descent, my rape defined me. I spent more energy running from it than I did living. … And always I was afraid – afraid that the rape had ‘ruined’ me; afraid that I would be ‘found out’; afraid afraid afraid. ‘Real’ Dominican men, after all, aren’t raped. And if I wasn’t a ‘real’ Dominican man I wasn’t anything. The rape excluded me from manhood, from love, from everything.”

“In books, biographies, monographs and program notes, Mr. Guest became one of the foremost authorities on dance in the Napoleonic and Victorian eras and notably on the Paris Opera Ballet. Jane Pritchard, curator of dance for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, described him as a cartographer of 19th-century ballet.”

Mr. Buck, who died March 30 at 79 after a battle with cancer, was an instrumental figure in Buffalo’s visual arts scene, both at the gallery and in the community. His decade-long stint as director at the Albright-Knox was defined by a bookish enthusiasm for the work of contemporary American artists and an involvement in Buffalo’s burgeoning avant garde art scene that set a precedent for future directors.

He had been trying to sell his apartment since the election, but no one would buy it. “Mr. Brassner, 67, lived alone amid a collection of about 100 vintage electric guitars, 40 guitar amplifiers dating to the 1930s, 150 ukuleles and artwork by Robert Indiana, Mati Klarwein, Jack Kerouac and others.” The damage to his collection isn’t yet known.

Wilson’s assemblages, she said, only told a story (to her, at least) when she put them together, and she didn’t plan the story ahead of time. “Inside the home garage that was long ago converted into her studio, Ms. Wilson worked in a uniform that included knickers, long socks and a vest. The shelves in the room were filled with the ephemera that she had purchased at five-and-dime stores, antique shops and flea markets or was given by friends and neighbors. She used her daughter’s toys, including a tiny doll.”

The dean of the school said, “It is in the times that are most challenging that we, as artists, must engage the world with our greatest passion, clarity and forward-thinking vision. … To be an artist in an uncertain future, you must be brave, you must be bold, and you must strive for excellence.”

“Mrs. Heinz, the British-born widow of Henry J. ‘Jack’ Heinz II, was a quiet but influential force in the literary and cultural life of the United States and Britain for decades. She endowed literary awards in both countries, supported quarterly journals and a publishing house, and bankrolled a major expansion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She and her husband devoted much of their philanthropy to Pittsburgh, the home base of the Heinz family’s enterprises, and were instrumental in the development of the city’s downtown cultural district in the 1970s.”

“He is probably best known for his first film at Ghibli, the critically acclaimed Grave of the Fireflies (1988), a tale of two children struggling to survive at the end of World War II. Takahata himself survived heavy U.S. bombing of Okayama City when he was 9 years old. … The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Takahata’s fifth and final for Ghibli, was one of the most expensive Japanese films made, anime or live-action, with a budget of around $50 million.”

After a report last month by The New York Times detailing a pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Meier, more women have come forward to share their own upsetting encounters with him. But in recounting such experiences, these women said they had also been disturbed by a sense of helplessness that pervaded the firm. Mr. Meier’s behavior was common knowledge, they said, but no one seemed to have the power to stop it.