Spencer Elden claims that the band exploited him with what he now calls child pornography — but he's been exploiting that image of his infant self for some time. His actual grudge appears to be over an art show. - Artnet
“Plastic in those days was ugly, and it was cheap. But Alan and (designers) the Vignellis had made something that was beautiful, and it could be abused. You could put it in the dishwasher. You could drop it. And it lasted forever." - The New York Times
He's now 30, and on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court against a host of defendants tied to the album, alleging the cover is “sexual exploitation” that will hurt him — emotionally and physically — for the rest of his life. - Washington Post
“My approach to our conversation was to listen to her; I would get angry, happy, inspired,” Scorsese explains. “Fran is, to me, asking very serious questions even when she’s being humorous about things. Deadline
Taking advantage of the free movement a US passport provides, and tired of the disadvantages that come with dark skin at home, these performers, writers, and visual artists are making lives and careers overseas. - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
The expatriate American singer-dancer, who arrived in Paris in 1925 and became a legend, will become only the sixth woman, and the first Black woman, to be included among the 80 "immortals" memorialized in the French capital's most august monument. - Yahoo! (AFP)
"With an acting career that began in the 1960s with a string of roles in Japanese martial arts films and TV shows and went on to include more than 100 films, Chiba became widely known in the west after being name-checked in True Romance" - and being featured in Kill Bill. - The Guardian (UK)
"'Five-thousand-year-old culture on my back; late-twentieth-century world in my face' is how Ms. Liu described her life-changing arrival in the United States from China in 1984, when she was 36 and already an accomplished painter." - The New York Times
Upson, "one of the most significant artists to emerge from the vibrant Los Angeles art scene this century, won early attention for The Larry Project, an open-ended phantasmagoria," and she continued with resin sculptures that merged Americans' bodies with their houses and possessions. - The New York Times
Murphy, who dreamt up The Worst Witch series at age 18 (the first book was published when she was 24), refused to sell the rights to Disney because they wanted far too much control. - BBC
Loewen had no patience for the commonly used anti-Black model of the history of the South in the U.S., and his books made it abundantly clear where the deliberate misconceptions - you might call them lies - got started. - The New York Times
Greenfield wrote nearly 50 books for children, stories told with joy, rhythm, melody, and enlightenment. Her "expressive poetry and prose illuminated the lives of Black people, including those of midwives during slavery and the Southerners who, like her family, moved north during the Great Migration." - The New York Times
Morgan "made his international debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1982, conducting Mozart’s Abduction From the Seraglio in the city where the composer spent much of his life, before an infamously fastidious and unforgiving audience. He later said his only goal was to get in and out of the State Opera without being booed. As it happened, he...
