As befits a man who has been held up as an avatar of his generation’s achievements and failings, Wenner has left behind a complex legacy. But it’s one that he’s happy to defend. - The New York Times
In one, the estate accused its former gallery and an insurance company of having damaged artworks, some beyond repair. In the other, the estate was sued by a production company who claimed that a tense back-and-forth with Baldessari’s descendants ultimately led to the cancelation of a Gagosian gallery show. - ARTnews
The five recipients of the Japan Art Association's 15 million yen ($102,000) prize, conceived as a Nobel for the arts, are composer/trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, sculptor Olafur Eliasson, painter Vija Celmins, stage director Robert Wilson, and architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, winner of last year's Pritzker Prize. - Finestre sull'Arte
"His best friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, had died in a train crash, before his second wife, Gwyn, left him and took their children with her. The diary Steinbeck wrote throughout the year that followed was the most 'intense and private' journal he ever wrote." - The Observer (UK)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her 1853 book A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, wrote that the autobiography of Josiah Henson was one of her main inspirations. And who was Henson? Someone with a life story as compelling as those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. - MSN (The Atlantic)
Photographer and activist Carrie Mae Weems and George C. Wolfe, director and producer, discuss what the "responsibility to invade" institutions looks like, three years after the death of George Floyd. - The New York Times
These are the people who over roughly the last five years have gone off the deep end, as it were. “Almost everyone I talk to tells me about people they have lost ‘down the rabbit hole,’” Klein reports, “parents, siblings, best friends, as well as formerly trusted intellectuals and commentators.” - The New Republic
Ben Brantley visits the "Chinese-red living room" and "blindingly white boudoir" of the award-winning performer-playwright. "It felt like the natural setting for someone who habitually shifts among different selves … the encyclopedic frame of reference, the conjuring of a sophisticated Manhattan, the summoning of a decades-spanning parade of actresses." - The New York Times
"He is now able to bend down, squat, grab his toys and clothes with both hands from his closet without falling or dropping them," say his parents. "More importantly, he now only uses his wheelchair for long outings." He walks with a cane; he falls down sometimes, but less than before. - BBC
Known especially for the use of glissando, "(she) composed 17 symphonies, along with numerous works for small ensembles and voice, … pieces that were seldom performed in her home country, the United States, but found audiences in Europe, where she lived much of her professional life." - The New York Times
Best known for her English rendition of Don Quixote (considered the definitive version) and of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (who called her "my voice in English"), she was among the first translators to insist that her name be on the book cover. - The New York Times
He's responsible for some of the most important projects of the 1990s growth of central Los Angeles as a cultural and civic center, including the Anderson building at LACMA, the renovation/expansion of L.A. Central Library, and the Colburn School. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
Salinger’s public legacy, a gnarled mess of copyright enforcement designs, First Amendment controversies, and the persistent desire to be left alone by the press, is one of America’s most unique. - LitHub
