“With compelling, close-set eyes that gave her a distinctive appearance, Black built a film resume that included prostitutes, murderers, waitresses, transsexuals and thieves. She imbued the portrayals of her often vulnerable, working-class characters with pathos and occasional humor.”
Category: today’s top story
Tourist Breaks Finger Off 14th-Century Sculpture In Florence
“The 55-year-old Missouri man was measuring the right hand of the ancient artwork when he unintentionally snapped the pinky finger off the estimated 600-year-old piece. A security guard monitoring the exhibit reacted immediately but apparently intervened a moment too late.”
Superstorm Sandy Has Provoked Changes In The Way Art Is Insured
“The total insured losses from Hurricane Sandy are estimated at around $35 billion, and approximately $200 million to $300 million consisted of losses to art–a huge hit for art insurers, who had already seen their worst year for catastrophic losses on record in 2011.”
How Personalized Media Is Breaking Down Community
“We’re not just interacting in an individualistic way with smartphones and tablets and the Netflix-style personalization systems attached to them. We’re also using these tools to displace two of the rare communal media spaces to rise during the electronic era: family televisions and movie theaters.”
We’ve Lost Our Digital Innocence. What’s Next?
“It’s entirely unimaginable that something as revolutionary as the internet would not become entangled in struggles for power and control. Instinctively, we knew that our innocence stood on weak foundations.”
Bolshoi Ballet’s Wounded Director Hopes To Return To Work This Fall
“The Bolshoi ballet’s artistic director Sergei Filin said Thursday he hopes to return to work in Moscow in September even though his eyesight is still extremely limited after an attacker splashed acid in his face.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer Lays Off One-Third Of Newsroom Staff
“The cuts, part of owner Advance Publications’ shift to a ‘digital-first’ strategy, gutted the newspaper of about 50 experienced journalists.” Among the writers losing their jobs is longtime classical music and dance critic Donald Rosenberg.
Britain’s Independent On Sunday Eliminates Its Arts Critics
“All arts critics at the Independent on Sunday are to be axed from this September as part of cuts to the newspaper’s workforce. It is thought that a total of seven journalists are affected, including theatre critic Kate Bassett and music critic Anna Picard.”
New York’s 92nd Street Y Fires Executive Director
Sol Adler, who had led the busy cultural center since 1988, was removed by the board of directors because of his “undisclosed long-term personal relationship” with staffer Cathy Marto. Marto’s son-in-law, a former stockbroker who had served prison time for fraud, is under criminal investigation for extorting kickbacks while he worked as the Y’s head of facilities.
Walter De Maria, 77, Who Transformed Rooms, Landscapes, And The Idea Of Art
“He was best known for large-scale outdoor works that often involved simple if rather extravagant ideas or gestures: a SoHo loft filled with two feet of earth, for example, or a solid brass rod two inches in diameter and one kilometer long driven into the ground in Kassel, Germany.”