Category: people

Indeed, what did Jesus wear? He almost certainly didn’t dress as he is traditionally depicted, just as he almost certainly didn’t have long, light brown hair and blue eyes. He probably didn’t have a full beard, either. Scholar Joan Taylor gathers together the few clues we have from the New Testament, Roman commentary, and convention of the time and place to make an educated guess about Jesus’s sartorial style. (In a word, shabby.)

“Ms. Maxwell was a longtime favorite of critics. Ben Brantley of The New York Times, for one, praised her again and again. In 2005, when she played the world-weary Baroness of Vulgaria in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (the role led to her first Tony nomination and a Drama Desk award), he called her ‘the real heroine for anyone who demands wit and sophistication from a Broadway production.'”

“The Amis that Smith herself resembles is Martin. What they share is the predicament of the former wunderkind. Both burst to fame in their early 20s as truly funny comic novelists. Both are dedicated students of literature, as good as critics as they are as novelists. Both are transatlantic liberals who grew up in public and have been compelled to wear the mantle of the public intellectual. But public seriousness has never been a comfortable fit for either of them.”

Before she started curating architecture shows and taking on clients, she had jobs that supported artists in a variety of major ways: “In Peterborough, N.H., she was director of the MacDowell Colony, a prestigious artists’ retreat, and in Madison, Me., she directed the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Back in New York City, she was a board member and chairman of the composer, singer and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk’s House Foundation for the Arts.”

David Simon, writer and creator of The Wire, announced Cathey’s death on social media. “Though he earned credits in dozens of television shows and movies, it was Mr. Cathey’s portrayal of Freddy Hayes — an empathetic, salt-of-the-earth barbecue pit owner whose restaurant provides a respite for Francis Underwood, the scheming politician in House of Cards — that earned him three Emmy nominations and one win for outstanding guest actor in a drama series.”

The artist made a splash when she was a young painter in San Francisco, but she and her artist husband (James Kelly) left for New York and the Abstract Expressionist life. Using a palette knife instead of a brush, her technique “made Ms. Gechtoff stand out in a genre that was largely male.”

Daniel Kaluuya is nominated for an Academy Award, as is the movie, and now he’s in Black Panther as well. He’s glad to have his mom around to help him stay humble: “His mother finds acting too erratic a profession. ‘She calls me every time and says, ‘Have you got a job yet?’ And I haven’t. I can’t say to her, ‘You gotta wait – the nos mean something.’ I tell her I’m writing a script. She says, ‘Just type full stop.’’ [And] after the hype around Get Out, Kaluuya is more grateful than ever for his mother’s unhistrionic attitude. He calls this right-sizing.”

The composer was found dead on Friday in his Berlin apartment. No cause of death has been announced yet. Jóhannsson had just finished a score for the Rooney Mara film “Mary Magadalene.”

Elizabeth Alexander has been closely involved in one of the most important trends now shaping arts philanthropy: a growing focus on using arts and cultural grantmaking to advance social justice. You can bet that she’ll push Mellon to step up its own funding along these lines. It also seems likely that we’ll see a more powerful axis between Ford and Mellon that extends the influence of both institutions in the arts and cultural space.

Roxane Gay: “We can no longer worship at the altar of creative genius while ignoring the price all too often paid for that genius. In truth, we should have learned this lesson long ago, but we have a cultural fascination with creative and powerful men who are also “mercurial” or “volatile,” with men who behave badly. There are all kinds of creative people who are brilliant and original and enigmatic and capable of treating others with respect. There is no scarcity of creative genius, and that is the artistic work we can and should turn to instead.”