Category: people

Paley won a MacArthur “Genius” Grant for her work. Her methods met with resistance during the era of quantification and textbook standardization, but “in addition to teaching children, she mentored a generation of teachers, held workshops and lectured about her experiences in the classroom” – and wrote 13 well-regarded books about the educational rewards of storytelling as a pedagogical practice. – The New York Times

Lorne Michaels: “He was a force to be reckoned with, and his presence and strength were something I came to rely on. … He will be missed, but if God has him now, despite all the arguing, heaven will be much better lit.” – The New York Times

The Chronicle struggled in the first few years after Gwaltney and John A. Crowl established it in 1966, but became widely-read and influential for its coverage of unrest and social issues on college campuses in the weeks and years following the Kent State shootings in 1970. And in 1988, Gwaltney and Crowl founded The Chronicle of Philanthropy. – The Washington Post

“His first exhibition was of the sculptor Alison Wilding, whose work he continued to show until his death. It was in 1988, though, that … three of the [Goldsmiths] art school’s new graduates – Gary Hume, Michael Landy and Ian Davenport – had their first West End exhibition at Karsten Schubert Limited.” – The Guardian

“We were close for a long time. I was his photographer, colleague, friend, subject, and occasional collaborator. He used to say that he wanted to take off his white doctor’s coat and see Tourette’s in real life, outside a clinic or hospital. I facilitated this not only as a photographer, but also as someone with access to others with the same condition.” – New York Review of Books

Let’s put “job” in quotation marks. Being Hal Prince’s apprentice was a huge honor, almost (in my family) like getting into law school, but there were different degrees of apprenticeship. – The New York Times

The summer of 1954, which the author and his family spent in Paris, was when Steinbeck wrote the just-rediscovered short story “The Amiable Fleas” for his column in Le Figaro. But that wasn’t all he was up to, writes Christopher Dickey: there’s documentary evidence that he was gathering intelligence for the CIA. (Whether he found anything useful is another matter.) – The Daily Beast

“[He] created sculptures of some of the nation’s leading public figures, works that can be seen today in major cities … He [always] maintained his commitment to verisimilitude, whether depicting a charismatic President Franklin D. Roosevelt or an effervescent Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York.” – The New York Times

Over his long career in the theater, Prince received 21 Tony Awards, including three special Tonys, marking the most Tonys received by any individual. The celebrated director and producer was a frequent collaborator with Stephen Sondheim, as the director and producer of “Company,” “Follies,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “A Little Night Music,” director of “Sweeney Todd” and producer of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “West Side Story.” – Broadway News

Barnum’s peculiar gift lay in his relationship to his audience. Better than anyone who’d come before, the Prince of Humbugs understood that the public was willing—even eager—to be conned, provided there was enough entertainment to be had in the process. – The New Yorker