"In the early and mid-1990s, working primarily for The Source magazine, at the time the definitive digest of hip-hop’s commercial and creative ascendance, Mr. Modu was the go-to photographer. An empathetic documentarian with a talent for capturing easeful moments in often extraordinary circumstances, he helped set the visual template for dozens of hip-hop stars. The Source was minting a new generation...
Rovère's character "Arlette has struck a chord as everyone’s ideal disreputable aunt with a repertoire of outrageous stories that she just might tell if the burgundy is flowing. She is the sly, sharp-tongued doyenne of top Paris talent agency ASK, who knows where the bodies are buried, and just when to dig them up." But her character is more...
With barriers at every turn, from an anxious director who didn't want to work with the leading actors to disastrous early scripts, no one expected Midnight Cowboy to get completed - or be a hit. Jerome Hellman "helped steer the project through crisis after crisis, fudging on cost estimates, fighting with recalcitrant collaborators and surreptitiously shooting scenes on the...
MacLeod had been a working, but struggling, actor for many years when he read for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. He had been asked to audition for the role of Lou Grant - the role that eventually went to Ed Asner - but asked to read for Murray instead. "As Murray, the balding, humble head writer and...
Her rifle was important during the war; her camera became more important after: "As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths." - The New York Times
Dobkin was an early idol in the women-loving-women movement. "Long before K.D. Lang transformed herself from a country artist into an androgyne pop idol and sex symbol, smoldering in a man’s suit on the cover of Vanity Fair being mock-shaved by the supermodel Cindy Crawford; long before Melissa Etheridge sold millions of copies of her 1993 album, Yes I Am, and...
"As a professor at American University in Washington, where he joined the faculty in 1970, Dr. Larson taught some of the first classes offered to U.S. students on African writers. At a time when the literary canon consisted almost entirely of works by British and American authors, he helped secure a place in American academia for writers including ...
"Over the course of his career, Carle illustrated more than 70 books for kids. He didn't get started on that path until he was nearly 40, but he found great inspiration in … insects. Spiders, lady bugs, crickets and of course, that famous caterpillar, all as colorful and friendly as Carle himself." - NPR
Milan's Teatro alla Scala, where she was trained and first became famous, "recalled the 'fairytale rise' of the daughter of a tram driver who, through 'talent, obstinance and work became the most famous ballerina in the world, has inspired generations of young people, and not just in the world of dance.'" - Yahoo! (AP)
" résumé included reimagining classic American plays through diverse casting and a stint in the ensemble of Ntozake Shange's groundbreaking 1976 Broadway show, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. But she was best known for shows she wrote and performed at venues like the Kitchen in Manhattan and Franklin Furnace in Brooklyn,...
"Before Halprin, American dance was cast in Graham's regal mold, presented formally onstage, and performed by highly trained bodies that acted out the choreographer's vision in a rarefied movement language. Halprin's rebellion was to declare that any movement, performed with presence and intention, could be a dance, and anybody could be a dancer." - San Francisco Chronicle
"He was globally recognised as a major architect of the 20th century, despite rarely building outside his native Brazil. … Because he worked with large expanses of raw concrete – a cheap and abundant material in his home country – his name was often linked with Brazilian brutalism. But it was a label Mendes da Rocha rejected." - Dezeen
Artists partnered with other artists — coupled, married or otherwise entangled — is as old as art itself. Did two artists, in their attraction to one another, create something that they might otherwise have not? There is a particular kind of glory and fame to be earned from such unions. - The New York Times
Kathy Andrews and her husband Jim, "with his best friend, John P. McMeel, concocted a newspaper syndication company from the basement of the Andrewses’ rented ranch house. Ms. Andrews, who had a master’s degree in mathematics, kept the books. They called it Universal Press Syndicate because, Mr. Trudeau said, 'it sounded bland and boring and like it had been...
Freitag, "a reference librarian at the Library of Congress for nearly a half-century, was unknown to the general public. But she was, in more ways than one, a librarian to the stars. Known for her encyclopedic knowledge of resources in science and technology, Ms. Freitag was sought out by the leading interpreters of the galaxy. She developed a particular...
