CAA News Today

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, architects, museum directors, collectors, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note is a text on the art historian Angela Rosenthal, written by her colleague David Bindman for CAA.

• David Becker, curator of prints and drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and professor of art history at several schools across New England, died on November 26, 2010. He was 63
• Frederick S. Beckman, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame who taught industrial and graphic design for more than fifty years, died on October 31, 2010. He was 93
• H. Allen Brooks, a professor of architecture at the University of Toronto for nearly thirty years, died on August 8, 2010, at the age of 84. An authority on Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, he was a past president of the Society of Architectural Historians
• Laura Cohen, cofounder of Krafti-Kit, an online fiber-arts kit store, who studied art history at the University of California in Santa Barbara, died on September 22, 2010. She was 42
• William Cumming, a painter of the Northwest School whose contemporaries included Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, died on November 22, 2010, at the age of 93. He also taught at the Burnley School of Professional Art (now the Art Institute of Seattle) and Cornish College of the Arts
• Nassos Daphnis, a Greek-born painter based in New York who showed his colorful, precise geometric abstractions at Leo Castelli Gallery, died on November 23, 2010, at age 96. He was also a noted horticulturist who grew hybrid tree peonies
• Diane Darst, the founder and director of Learning to Look, an art-education program for children, and the author of two textbooks, Western Civilization to 1648 and Learning to Look: A Complete Art History and Art Appreciation Program for Grades K–8, died on June 22, 2010. She was 62
• John Diebboll, an architect who worked for Michael Graves and who, as an artist, transformed pianos into sculptural objects, died on November 23, 2010, at age 54. He also founded his own firm, Diebboll Architects, in 2007
• Denis Dutton, scholar, cultural commentator, author of The Art Instinct, and founder and editor of the website Arts & Letters Daily, died on December 28, 2010. He was 66
• Robert Joseph Forsyth, professor emeritus of art history at Colorado State University who began his career at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in the 1950s, died on June 19, 2010, at the age of 88
• Sally D. Garen, professor of art history at the Corcoran College of Art and Design and Marymount University, among other schools around Washington, DC, died on November 29, 2010. She was 63
• Kay Gaskill-Jaeger, an artist, quilter, and urban planner for the Texas State Parks Department who studied art history at the University of Texas at Austin, died on November 27, 2010, at the age of 61
• Jane Tiley Griffin, an art historian who taught at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and Howard University for more than thirty years, died on November 18, 2010, at the age of 84. She also organized tours to Southeast Asia
• Garry Gross, a fashion photographer who took the infamous photograph of a nude Brooke Shields that was later appropriated by the artist Richard Prince, died on November 30, 2010. He was 73
• Varnette P. Honeywood, an artist and teacher whose colorful works appeared in The Cosby Show during the 1980s, died on September 12, 2010, at the age of 59
• Stephen Irwin, an artist based in Louisville, Kentucky, who was a member of a collective called Zephyr Gallery, died on December 27, 2010. He was 51
• Theodore W. Kheel, a labor negotiator who was collected modern and contemporary art, especially works by Robert Rauschenberg, died on November 12, 2010. He was 96
• Peter C. Marzio, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston since 1982 who oversaw a rapid growth in the permanent collection, died on December 9, 2010. He was 67
• Roy R. Neuberger, the founder of the investment firm Neuberger Berman whose private collection comprises the core of a museum that bears his name at Purchase College, State University of New York, died on December 24, 2010. He was 107
• Angela Rosenthal, an associate professor of art history at Dartmouth College and a scholar of eighteenth-century European art, died on November 11, 2010. David Bindman has contributed an obituary for CAA
• Matthew Selsor, a curator and the director of the Anderson Gallery at Drake University, died on July 11, 2010, at the age of 27
• Elizabeth C. Shepherd, a professor of art history at the University of Pittsburgh and the former head of the Frick Fine Arts Library at her school, died on April 6, 2010, at the age of 95
• Andrzej Stanislaw Tomaszewski, a former director of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, died on October 25, 2010. Born in 1934, he had been a professor of conservation at numerous universities in Poland and Germany
• John Warhola, a brother of Andy Warhol and founding member of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, where he served as vice president for twenty years, died on December 24, 2010. He was 85
• Peter J. Worth, an artist, art historian, and former chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, died on May 3, 2010. He was 93

Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.