Category: people

Robert Smith: “She subverted both sides of the high-low equation, ridiculing and exaggerating Abstract Expressionist technique while imbuing popular culture characters with raw, uncontrollable feelings that were more real and gripping than the angst of the Abstract Expressionists.” – The New York Times

“The unspecified procedure [at the Cleveland Clinic] was, according to MTT’s statement in his announcement of taking medical leave, ‘in continuation of treatment for a heart condition I have managed for many years.’” – San Francisco Classical Voice

Apart from his tombstone and the old stone buildings, every Kafka attraction I visited was built in the 21st century. Czechoslovakia’s uneasy leaders had tried to scrub Kafka from Prague’s history; now, the city welcomes his lucrative presence every day. – LitHub

“[She] wrote a Facebook post late Friday … ‘Just 30 teensy hours after a five-hour open-heart surgery (10 years after my OTHER open-heart surgery to repair a dissected aorta), I am tube- and oxygen-free and have even walked around the nurse’s station three times!'” – CBC

He’d completed a doctorate in literature at Cambridge and wasn’t sure what to do with himself next when, on a visit to London, he saw the 17th-century woodcarvings by Grinling Gibbons in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly. He was so amazed by them that he taught himself the craft, and he got so good that he was eventually commissioned to recreate some of Gibbons’s own work, lost in the 1986 fire at Hampton Court Palace. – The New York Times

“Over the course of his tenure as our founding director, Peter transformed BAMPFA from a modest university art collection into the internationally renowned art and film institution it is today. Generations of Bay Area art lovers have benefited from his insight, knowledge, independence, and boundless energy, and his legacy will reverberate across and beyond our museum for decades to come.” – ARTnews

Jaffee and his wife Kay founded the group after taking a graduate class in early choral and instrumental music, and the Waverly Consort sparked interest in early music all over the world – and encouraged many competitor groups to form as well. – The New York Times

Selz’s views strongly shaped MoMA’s take on European and non-Abstract Expressionist art during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his time at Berkeley made the museum “a locus of activity in the California scene.” – ArtNews