Category: people

“A Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered compelling evidence suggesting that the artist is former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham. The notion that Banksy is Gunningham, 34, who was educated at the £9,240-a-year Bristol Cathedral School, will shock the artist’s fans, fond of their hero’s ‘anti-establishment’ stance.”

Seymour Papert, “who was a professor of mathematics, education, and media technology at MIT, has devoted much of his career to learning: self-learning (he taught himself Russian) and learning about learning. He was one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence, and he invented the computer language Logo to teach children about computers. Now he must learn something even more challenging – how to be Seymour Papert again.”

“Conner liked to have control – the neatness of his house attested to that – and the nearest he could come to controlling public information about himself was to inject it with ruses and contradictions. The shaggy look of his early assemblages earned Conner a place in the Bay Area tendency briefly known as Funk art. But that shagginess is deceptive.”

“The crowning achievement of his career was founding and directing Chicago Opera Theater, the city’s second opera company and one of America’s leading regional opera companies. Stone started the company (as Chicago Opera Studio Inc.) in 1974 and served as its artistic director until health complications following a 1984 stroke forced him to step down in 1993.”

“Sherman Lee, who led the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1958 to 1983 and was hailed widely as one of the greatest art-museum directors of his time, died Wednesday in Chapel Hill, N.C… Lee did for the Cleveland Museum of Art what George Szell, the renowned conductor and music director, did for the Cleveland Orchestra: He cemented its reputation as an internationally famous institution.”

“Thomas M. Disch, an author, poet and critic who twisted the inherently twisted genre of science fiction in new, disturbing directions, including writing his last book in the voice of God, died on Friday in his Manhattan apartment… His friend Alice K. Turner said Mr. Disch shot himself.”

“Opera star Dame Joan Sutherland has broken both her legs after a fall in the garden of her home in Switzerland. Her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, revealed the 81-year-old soprano is expected to be in hospital for eight weeks.”

Best known for his work from the 1980s, Mr. Durang, 59, these days teaches playwriting at Juilliard, blogs for The Huffington Post and has a new play, “Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them,” which is to have its premiere at the Public Theater next spring. He lives in Bucks County, Pa., with John Augustine, also a writer. “My relationship with my partner has lasted 23 years, and my parents’ bumpy marriage lasted 15 years,” Mr. Durang said. “So I win.”

“This habit of latching onto the personal lives of the famous is widely derided as a sad attempt by lonely people to make up for the lack of intimacy in their own lives. But Jaye Derrick sees it differently. Her research suggests these ‘parasocial relationships’ –that is, a “relationship” where the other person doesn’t know you exist — can actually be a positive influence, es pecially for people with low self-esteem.”

Last week an emergency call went out when it looked like Anderson would lose her home in foreclosure. “Folks over the weekend held benefits. And dozens upon dozens in the city, across the state and nationwide deposited help at Bank of America to help meet Anderson’s $45,000 payment deadline by Monday.”