Category: people

“Oliver Postgate, creator of cuddly stuffed cat Bagpuss and other much-loved British children’s television characters, has died at the age of 83, his family said Tuesday.”

“Robert Prosky, a craggy-faced, heavyset character actor who after 23 years in regional theater became a familiar face on Broadway, in movies and on television, notably as a gruff desk sergeant in the later years of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ died on Monday in Washington.”

Says music’s éminence grise of former enfants terribles: “The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society.” And he still has plenty of opinions – about Cage, Adams, Carter, Messiaen, C major…

“Joza Karas, 82, a Czechoslovakian-born violin teacher who spent decades tracking down and reviving musical compositions written by Jews in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt, died Nov. 28 at his home in Bloomfield, Conn. He had congestive heart failure.”

A new biography of the artist Frida Kahlo “carries with it a compelling gift: Shortly before her death, the artist consented to psychological testing,” and the results “provided a lengthier history than she had ever provided to anyone, about paintings that were lost, destroyed or paintings we know about but with specific information about dates, interpretations and so forth.”

“Cornelius C. Vermeule III, who over four decades as curator of classical antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston built a reputation for astute acquisitions, prodigious scholarship and exuberant eccentricity (his office had a working model of Cyprus’s national railroad), died on Nov. 27 in Cambridge, Mass.”

“Weston Naef, a curator who helped build the J. Paul Getty Museum’s photography collection over the last two decades into one of the most important in the world, has announced that he will retire in January, the museum said Monday.”

“Warren M. Robbins, founder of the Museum of African Art, forerunner to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, died Dec. 4 at George Washington University Hospital of complications from a fall at his home last month. … When he started the Museum of African Art in 1964, Robbins had never been to Africa, never worked in a museum, never been involved with the arts and never raised money.”

“Working as a critic is a curious, paradoxical thing to do. It begins with a deeply personal experience, as you bring your head and heart, your flawed knowledge and particular past into an engagement that’s as full and immediate as possible with some work of art. What follows is a cooly analytical act of objectification.”

Foch is probably best remembered by moviegoers as the rich, manipulative socialite who tries to buy Gene Kelly’s character, as well as his artwork, in Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 musical, “An American in Paris.” Or as Bithia, the pharaoh’s daughter, who finds and adopts the baby Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic, “The Ten Commandments.”