"(His gift was) to elevate the formulaic celebrity profile with humor, a literary voice and the polish of a short story. That was the only way Mr. Zehme … could accept his fate performing what many writers consider one of the lowest forms of journalism." - MSN (The Washington Post)
In the early 1960s, Lynne Desroches-Noblecourt’s friendships and grit proved essential to the success of her career’s crowning achievement: the seemingly quixotic campaign to save from destruction the temples, sculptures and artifacts at Abu Simbel, near Egypt’s border with Sudan. - Washington Post
A letter posted on Twitter asked Polley to mail her Oscar back to California. "It said she could keep the award for one more week, ... but ultimately, it needed to be returned so it could go to the 'rightful' winner: All Quiet on the Western Front." - BBC
"The styles explored by Sister Guèbrou ... were so singular in sound and structure that music scholars often puzzled over the main source of her inspiration — seamlessly mixing forms such as jazz, chamber music and rhythms from her homeland." - Washington Post
Cherry died in November after performing in London. Earlier, he said, "A lot of people think your success is how much money you make. … I feel successful because I hung in there and have integrity in what I do. The stuff I do has meaning." - Oregon ArtsWatch
Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra "perfected a witty robotic pop that ... influenced the sound of everything from Nintendo video game scores to the techno genre and hip-hop." He also composed music for film scores, including for The Last Emperor. - Washington Post
Julia Voss, author of the first-ever biography of Europe's first abstract artist, talks about the influence which the 19th-century scientific revolution had on the mystical artist, how hard she tried to get shown, the appalling sexism she faced, and the voices she heard. - Artnet
Her most radical initiative was “02020,” a plan to hand over the programming, the keys to the building and the entire annual production budget to a collective of artists. The idea was to extend experimentalism into every part of the organization. - The New York Times
"From the waning years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles and flaws of the well-known, the pompous and the powerful in monologues replete with pithy one-liners and musical ditties. He called himself 'a political cartoonist for the blind.'" - MSN (The Washington Post)
His 1981 novel, about a patient of Sigmund Freud's who ended up a victim of the Holocaust, was a huge success commercially and critically (it was runner-up to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children for the Booker Prize), and its mimicry of Freud's letters was good enough to fool Anna Freud. - The Guardian
"A Dutch art collective can release an experimental erotic film showing the French novelist Michel Houellebecq having sex with young women in spite of the author's attempt to stop its circulation, an Amsterdam court has ruled." (The project, by the way, was Houellebecq's wife's idea.) - The Guardian
A novelist and essayist who was for several years considered a likely Nobel candidate, "(she) found herself ostracized in the (newly-independent) country of Croatia for refusing to embrace its aggressive nationalism and spent the rest of her life abroad." - The New York Times
Starting in the 1970s, he overtook Alfred Deller as the world's leading male alto through his work with David Munrow's Early Music Consort of London, Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music, and other ensembles, developing a large discography and blazing a trail for the current countertenor boom. - Gramophone
For a writer so relentlessly suspicious of the accounts we give of ourselves, and so attuned to the meager defenses we muster against self-exposure, memoir is a risky medium. - The New Republic
A rescue ship funded by British street artist Banksy was seized in Lampedusa on Sunday after Italy's coast guard said the boat had disobeyed its instructions to head to Sicily after carrying out a migrant rescue operation. - Reuters
