Category: people

Laurence Olivier’s entire archive of personal papers, including copious letters from stage and screen stars, has been purchased by the British Library. – BBC

As Steve Wynn was wrapping up details on the sale of his casino/hotel empire, he had a flurry of meetings to negotiate a sweet deal on what would happen to the multi-million-dollar art collection. – New York Observer

Sonoma County votes to change the name of its airport to the Charles M. Schultz Airport, in honor of the late cartoonist. – CBC

For 17 years, Tito Capobianco has ruled the Pittsburgh Opera with persistence and an iron hand. Now he’s retiring. “I don’t believe in democracy in the arts. You don’t use four persons to do the same painting.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“The British art scene now is full of people bidding to define the next thing post-Damien Hirst. Contenders have come and gone, but it’s Higgs, curator of exhibitions including ‘Then and Now’ at the Lisson Gallery and a director of London’s Cabinet Gallery, who seems to be the man with a plan. And the reason that Higgs is a genuine influence is that he chooses the right artists. Long before they attained their current fame, he worked closely with Ofili, Martin Creed, Fiona Banner, Jeremy Deller and Paul Noble.” – The Guardian

— novelist, and a contemporary of Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and Cyril Connolly, has died at age 94. – New York Times

An interview with German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who celebrates his 75th birthday-and five decades of recitals, concerts, and operas-next month with the release of a special Deutsche Grammophon Fischer-Dieskau Edition of 20 CDs. Retired from singing since 1992, Fischer-Dieskau has kept busy ever since reciting poetry, conducting, and painting. What keeps him hungry for artistic expression? “Goethe always said that life must be like art somehow. It is for him only bearable if it is art. Otherwise it cannot be lived.” – The Times (UK)

Former Livent theater entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky has been hired by Conrad Black’s National Post newspaper to be “creative marketing consultant.” – CBC

Before her stormy marriage to poet Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath was dating a Canadian student at Cambridge, who has long since disappeared. Whatever happened to this extra-literary-circle character “with a habitual slouch…an affable sheepish look, and a reputed…alcoholic”? – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Last year Alice Goldfarb Marquis embarked on a project to come up with a list of the 100 most significant independent scholars of the 20th Century. What fun, she thought, as she set about gathering her names. And then she started circulating her suggestions… – The Idler