He was the first Black man to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (in 1983 for playing the drill sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman), and won an Emmy for his role as Fiddler in the 1977 series Roots. His last screen role was in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple. - AP
"Beginning in the late 1970s, (he) began painting the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and, most indelibly, the World Trade Center. Those three buildings appear over and over through the decades, … (with) the shimmering, self-contained quality of letters or numbers." - The New York Times
In 2021 he pled guilty in an enormous art-fraud case and was sentenced to seven years in prison. This past January he was released into home confinement. He's now searching for — if not redemption, a way to earn a living, as Hollywood fights over the rights to his story. - Vanity Fair
Sebastian Smee: "As an artist, he was no bully. Rather, he was a physicist. He wanted you to know, and to feel in your bones, that weight isn’t just a thing — it’s a force. It’s mass times acceleration. As such, it carries an inherent threat." - The Washington Post (MSN)
Serra’s most celebrated works had some of the scale of ancient temples or sacred sites and the inscrutability of landmarks like Stonehenge. - The New York Times
Joana Vicente came to Sundance from the Toronto International Film Festival and arrived as COVID had pushed the festival online for 2021 and again in 2022. - The Hollywood Reporter
A tireless advocate for contemporary music over a six-decade career, Eötvös came to international attention as a member of the Stockhausen Ensemble (1968-1976). He later served as music director of the Ensemble intercontemporain and principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony (1995-98). Between 1997 and 2023, he published 14 operas. - Limelight (Australia)
"Earlier this month, I accepted a buyout from the company; Friday was my last day. It’s been a great ride. … I’ve been craving some focused time for a book I intend to write about the time I spent in Chile following the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship." - Los Angeles Times
But now, the French actor is playing Mary, Queen of Scots. "Alone on stage for 90 minutes, she performs something between a rite and an elaborate courtly dance, her stylised, repetitive movements and moments of stillness accompanied by Pinckney’s poetic script casting a spell over her audience." - The Observer (UK)
Laurent de Brunhoff took a character his mother and father invented when he was 5, and kept him going for decades. "'Babar, c’est moi,' Mr. de Brunhoff often said. By all accounts, artist and elephant shared the same Gallic urbanity and optimistic outlook." - The New York Times
Hejinian was "a central figure in the Language poetry movement of the 1970s and ’80s who channeled the seismic social changes and avant-garde artistic climate of the 1960s into work that was both richly lyrical and groundbreaking in its experimentalism." - The New York Times
During a flourishing international career spanning more than six decades, Mr. Pollini was steadily ranked among those rare musicians to whom other musicians paid close attention. - Washington Post
"Daniel Sikkema, the ex-husband of the New York art dealer Brent Sikkema, who is embroiled in allegations that he orchestrated his former partner’s murder in Brazil earlier this year, was arrested in New York on Wednesday, March 20 for alleged passport fraud." - Hyperallergic
"With his distinctive lumbering form and droll delivery, Walsh was an ideal supporting player. A master of off-kilter comic delivery and dogged edginess, he excelled at roles that dwelled in the darker corners of humanity. No matter whom he played, he made a colorful impact." - The Hollywood Reporter
"A prolific composer with widely performed works, particularly his operas and songs, (he) was revered for his ability to fuse complex and often challenging modern music with lyrical texts. His works were frequently devastating in their emotional impact, sounding like organic expressions of the human voice." - The New York Times
