“During a 15-year relationship that was both professional and romantic, she helped [Kahn] produce his pathbreaking early buildings, including the Trenton Bathhouse and the Yale Art Gallery. Yet until recently, she received little credit for those iconic projects.”
Category: people
Pianist Alexis Weissenberg, 82
“[His] cool yet blazing approach divided reviewers. Where some heard impeccable technique, others heard soulless efficiency. Where some embraced the drama of his interpretations, others condemned them for aggressiveness.”
Omus Hirshbein, Classical Music Impresario, Dead At 77
A co-founder of the New York Chamber Symphony and (briefly) a top official at the US National Endowment for the Arts, Hirshbein is best remembered for reviving the concert series at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y and turning it into a major force in New York’s cultural life.
Straddling The Worlds Of Science And The Arts – And Having A Damn Good Time
John Brockman, a literary agent for scientists, has one foot in the world of science and one foot in the world of the humanities – and on his site, Edge.org, he gets big thinkers to talk about big ideas.
From Flinty Media Gal To Successful Author, With Chickens
Jeannette Wells, author of The Glass Castle: “Secrets are like vampires — once they’re out of the darkness they can’t hurt you anymore.”
Akira ‘Harry’ Mimura, Recording The Aftermath Of Nuclear War
Akira “Harry” Mimura became the cameraman for Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the rest of post-war Japan in 1946, but that’s because he already had a long career in Hollywood – one that encompassed an early talkie, a Howard Hughes film and “Around the World in Eighty Days.”
Documents Reveal: JR Tolkien Denied Nobel Because of “Bad Story-Telling”
According to Nobel Prize documents released after 50 years, one of the jury members, Anders Osterling, said that the work “has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality”.
Photojournalist Eve Arnold, 99
“The longevity of Eve Arnold’s career as a photographer matched the heterogeneity of her work. Despite the success of her portraits of the rich and famous, Arnold … was equally well known for photographing ‘the poor, the old and the underdog’. She said: ‘It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is’.”
Why Are We Still Fascinated With Joan Of Arc After Almost 600 Years?
“The self-proclaimed agent of God’s will, she wasn’t immortalized so much as she entered the collective imagination as a living myth. Centuries after death, she has been embraced by Christians, feminists, French nationalists, Mexican revolutionaries and even hairdressers. (Her crude cut inspired the bob flappers wore as a symbol of independence from patriarchal strictures.)”
The Three Faces Of Stephen Colbert
“There used to be just two Stephen Colberts, and they were hard enough to distinguish. The main difference was that one thought the other was an idiot. … Lately, though, there has emerged a third Colbert. This one is a version of the TV-show Colbert, except he doesn’t exist just on screen anymore. He exists in the real world and has begun to meddle in it.”