Richard Williams, Animator Of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ And The ‘Pink Panther’ Films, Dead At 86

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), a film-noirish comedy, was the first Hollywood film to show live actors and animated characters interacting in ways that looked seamlessly real. … Mr. Williams received a special Oscar for animation direction and for creating new characters for the film, which featured many well-established cartoon characters, and shared a visual effects Oscar.” – The New York Times

How’s The Six-Year-Old Who Got Thrown Off The Tate Modern Viewing Deck? Awful, But Stable

The parents of the boy, who had brought him from France to London on holiday, say that the full extent of his injuries is still uncertain, but that he suffered broken bones in the back, arms, and legs as well as a brain bleed. “Our son has already undergone two long and difficult operations … But he is alive, struggling with all his strength, and we remain hopeful.” – The Guardian

Native Hawaiians Protest Plans To Build Telescope Atop The Islands’ Highest Mountain

Native Hawaiians agree that Mauna Kea connects humanity to the universe — as an umbilical cord between Earth and space. The peak at Mauna Kea is the “highest point where land touches the sky — where the two deities, Sky Father and Earth Mother, meet,” said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, 68 , a retired cultural studies professor and elder in the fight against the telescope. To Native Hawaiians, putting a giant telescope on their sacred mountain is a desecration. – Los Angeles Times

San Francisco Mural Controversy Is An Example Of Public Responsibility For Art

Charles Desmarais: “As important as the Arnautoff murals are, as art and as American history, the issues raised by the attempt to destroy or obscure them are larger than this single controversy. They have to do with what I think of as a kind of cultural duty of care — with the avoidance of negligence or harm to works of art maintained by an organization for the public good. – San Francisco Chronicle

The Forgotten New York Photographer Finally Getting (Some Of) The Attention He Deserves

Alvin Baltrop only had a few shows while he was alive, one of which was at a gay nightclub. Now that he’s getting more attention, we can see some of the “real” New York of the 1970s and 1980s – the impoverished city that couldn’t rebuild a collapsed West Side highway, the piers where the Whitney Museum now stands, the cruising that happened under those piers, the time between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. (Oh, and they tell a lot of architectural history, too.) – The Guardian (UK)