Category: people

“Manhattan art dealer Lawrence B. Salander is trying to rise from the ashes of a 100-count indictment in a quaint storefront in pastoral Millbrook, New York, about two hours north of the city. … Dressed in a crisp, white linen shirt, Salander declined an interview request. He did say that he works at the gallery, that he didn’t own it and that his father-in-law, Donald Dowden, also works there.”

“It has been a pretty good run, as the performing arts go. Charles Wadsworth has hosted the popular chamber-music concerts at Spoleto festivals on two continents for a half century. … Wadsworth turned 80 on Thursday and the Spoleto Festival which opened the following day will be his last as he retires to a life of concerts and composing that may be only slightly less hectic.”

“I miss John Updike. … It’s not that I miss waiting for his next novel to appear. I don’t think I read one since the wonderful ‘In the Beauty of the Lilies’ was published in 1997. I didn’t hold my breath in expectation of those often-convoluted book reviews that showed up in The New Yorker. It’s not that. I miss his being around.”

“Brooks McNamara, a theater historian who shepherded a vast and disorganized array of letters, photographs, scripts, sheet music, set and costume designs, business records and other memorabilia into a valuable historical collection known as the Shubert Archive, died on May 8 in Doylestown, Pa.”

“Seven years ago, Ken Rabb was a legal aid lawyer and a weekend painter. But at the age of 53, he was diagnosed with young onset Alzheimer’s. … Years ago, he considered himself a hobbyist painter and agonized over his technique. Now, his art is no longer an intellectual process; it is color, form and shape. Every inch of wall space is taken up with abstract oil paintings, painted plates and collages of found objects.”

Jane Austen’s romantic life has long been an object of speculation, and “now a literary historian claims that her true love was a clergyman named Dr Samuel Blackall, who first caught Austen’s attention in 1798 when he was a guest of their mutual friends, the Lefroys.”

“Marcel Marceau is at the centre of a row over France’s cultural heritage. A Paris court has ordered that the extraordinary contents of his rural home be auctioned off at bargain prices next week to settle his debts. The mime, who died two years ago aged 84, had gone into receivership after ploughing all his money into theatre projects. The French arts world is up in arms and begging the government to buy Marceaus’ mime paraphernalia to ­preserve it for history’s sake.”

Wright proselytized for a humanistic, nature-focused organic architecture, but it turned into a dead end. He was ever the alpha dog and couldn’t edit his endless ideas to found a truly new architecture. You can’t clearly trace his influence, the way you can with the Bauhaus.

“It’s a fairly normal curve for women artists, especially women of her generation, circumscribed by paternalistic dismissal and then clobbered, like everyone else, by the catastrophes of aging. But instead of fading into her seniority, Henry surfaced in her mid-70s with triumphant, joyful work … tough geometric forms filled with bright yet sour tonalities.”

Canadian architect Arthur Erickson has died. “His projects include the Canadian Embassy in Washington, Kuwait Oil Sector Complex in Kuwait City and Kunlun Apartment Hotel Development in Beijing.” He also designed the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash.