Category: people

Glaser scrawled the first draft of the logo in the back of a cab, in 1976, red ink on a scrap of envelope; the sketch is now, fittingly, in the possession of the Museum of Modern Art. He made it for a marketing campaign for New York State, in 1977, which was a tricky moment for the city in particular—it didn’t seem very lovable. In the final design, the typeface is American Typewriter, friendly and approachable, with a cartoonish cast (notice the rounded bent knee of the “N”) that was Glaser’s signature, as if he anticipated the logo’s ascendance as kitsch. – The New Yorker

Mr. Reiner gained a national following in the 1950s as a brilliant straight man opposite Sid Caesar on influential TV comedy programs, directed movies that launched Steve Martin’s film career in the 1970s and 1980s, and played an aging con man in the popular “Oceans 11” movie franchise of the 2000s starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. – Washington Post

“With his charming, easeful baritone and a crisp, efficient touch at the piano, Cole carved out a professional career of more than 65 years. … Because of a familial resemblance in vocal timbre, and a fondness for some of the same material, Cole endured a lifetime of reflexive comparisons to his most famous sibling — Nat ‘King’ Cole, about a dozen years his senior.” – WBGO (Newark, NJ)

“[The decision is] a surprise legal victory in a fraud case his supporters say was politically motivated and a test of artistic freedom in Russia. Suspended sentences are widely seen as the lightest punishment in Russia’s legal system, which rarely issues not-guilty verdicts. The sentencing was met with applause by the hundreds of supporters gathered outside.” – The Moscow Times

Though Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he’s gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time. His projects and endeavors during the past 40-plus years could fill an encyclopedia: from rigorous classical works and radical reimaginations of Ennio Morricone film themes to deep explorations of his Jewish heritage under the Masada banner, whimsical neo-exotica, and sprawling improv excursions, where his sometimes jagged, sometimes supple saxophone playing mingles with the sound worlds of collaborators like Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. – Rolling Stone

Solanas is most famous for having shot Andy Warhol, of course, but she had an artistic life long before that moment. In the beginning, the writer and Warhol Factory superstar Ultra Violet wrote, “beyond her overheated rhetoric, she had a truly revolutionary vision of a better world run by and for the benefit of women.” – The New York Times

“Lewes’s major work, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality (1988), traced the evolution of the prevailing view that homosexuality was a curable illness and explored what he called the psychoanalytic establishment’s ‘century-long history of homophobia.'” – The New York Times

“I’ve survived,” tweeted Michael Rosen. “The 74-year-old author, performer and broadcaster is one of Britain’s most beloved writers, the author of more than 140 books including We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Little Rabbit Foo Foo, and children’s poetry including Chocolate Cake and Don’t.” – The Guardian (UK)

Spinks was working as a school librarian in Pontiac, Michigan, when “she and a friend, also a librarian, contacted the U.S. Library of Congress and volunteered to visit Washington, D.C., to help organize the ‘Slave Narratives.'”- Detroit Free Press

Stone “was enjoying a moderately successful career as a singer and actress when she jumped to a new level of fame in 1968 as part of the wildly popular musical revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” – The New York Times