Category: people

“The body of a missing Montpelier man, Brian Webb, who had been the longtime conductor of the Vermont Philharmonic, was discovered Wednesday morning in Lake Champlain … Webb was 65.”

“The assistant, James Meyer, was indicted in 2013 on charges connected to a scheme that prosecutors said involved the theft of at least 22 artworks over about six years. Mr. Meyer removed the works from Mr. Johns’s studio in Sharon, Conn., prosecutors said, and delivered them to an art gallery in Lower Manhattan, where they were sold for about $6.5 million.”

“The bequest includes biographies, histories, reference books, poetry and fiction. It has been welcomed by public services strained by years of neglect and underfunding; many libraries in Zimbabwe have no budget to buy new books.”

Once, Mary Beard was just an unusually prolific Oxbridge don. Now she’s a popular historian with multiple television sows to her credit, something of a heroine to middle-aged and older women (and more than a few of their daughters), and a skilled slayer of Internet trolls. (Sometimes she even reforms them.)

“Over six decades, Sam Hunter could usually be found at the center of some of the most exciting times for art in New York and beyond. He was an art historian (an authority on 20th-century art), a museum director, a curator, an art critic and an art adviser to museums, corporations and private collectors” – not to mention author or co-author of some 50 books.

Hadid may not withdraw her suit since, Reuters says, she sought damages and the closing of the venerable NYRB. Why did she ever file it? The retraction should not have been hard to get; a suit simply extends the damage to her reputation, which, in spite of Filler’s serious error, was principally done by her own flippancy, abetted by the Internet’s facility in sating our lust for “how the mighty have fallen” stories.

“One of the pleasures of hanging out with Mitchell is that he is, by self-identification, many kinds of nerd – a Star Trek nerd, a Doctor Who nerd, a map nerd, a taxonomy nerd, a tea nerd, a word nerd, and, for good measure, what you might call a nerd nerd: an enthusiast of nerdery of all kinds. At one point in our conversation, he speaks admiringly of sheep nerds.”

“My parents [were] getting worried. It’s hard enough to have a child, much less a child who demands to inspect our groceries and medicines for evidence that their protective seals have been tampered with.”

“Richard was an academic failure who was happiest when performing in plays.” You may know him from his starring roles in “The Great Escape” and “Jurassic Park” or from his directing of “Gandhi” or “A Bridge Too Far” – or maybe even as Chancellor of the University of Sussex.

“My cast mates keep teasing me,” she said, “like, ‘Not all jobs end in Emmy nominations, just so you know.'”