CAA News Today

In its semimonthly roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, filmmakers, curators, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note are two texts written for CAA: Amalia Nelson-Croner writes about her mother, Karin Christine Nelson; and Janis Bergman-Carton pays tribute to Karl Kilinski II, her colleague at Southern Methodist University.

• Jordan Belson, a Californian experimental filmmaker who created groundbreaking work in nonobjective cinema, died on September 6, 2011. He was 85
• Bernhard Blume, a German artist who worked in photography with his wife Anna, passed away on September 1, 2011. He was 73
• Nicolas Djandji, an artist born in Egypt who graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art and worked for the Dia Foundation in New York, died on September 2, 2011. He was 24 years old
• John Dobbs, an award-winning New York–based painter who taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the New School for Social Research, and John Jay College, passed away on August 9, 2011. He was 80
• Paul Gardère, a Haitian artist who emigrated to the United States in 1959, died on September 2, 2011. Born in 1944, the artist had been showing at Skoto Gallery in New York
• Hugh Gumpel, a New York artist who taught for many years at the National Academy School and at Purchase College, State University of New York, passed away on May 2, 2011, at the age of 85
• Richard Hamilton, an influential British artist who inspired Pop art and whose diverse oeuvre comprises works in painting, found objects, collage, printmaking, graphic design, typography, and digital images, died on September 13, 2011. He was 89
• Michael Hart, a computer engineer who founded Project Gutenberg, which has digitized more than 36,000 books in 60 languages, died on September 6, 2011. He was 64 years old
• Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, a prominent Iraqi sculptor who emerged in the 1960s and who was instrumental in the recovery of looted artworks from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, died on September 12, 2011. He was 82
• John Hoover, an Alaskan artist who drew on indigenous traditions, died on September 3, 2011, at the age of 91. The Anchorage Museum held a retrospective of his work in 2002
• Budd Hopkins, an Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor who became obsessed with unidentified flying objects and alien abductions, left this earth for a higher plane on August 21, 2011. He was 80 years old
• Jeanette Ingberman, a curator who cofounded and led Exit Art, an important nonprofit art space in New York, died on August 24, 2011. She was 59 years old
• Harry Jackson, an artist who traded his Abstract Expressionist style for realist depictions of the American West, passed away on April 25, 2011. He was 87
• Beverly Whitney Kean, a Hollywood film star who wrote several books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian art and art patrons, died on July 9, 2011. She was 89 years old
• Karl Kilinski II, a specialist in Greek vase painting and a longtime professor of art history at Southern Methodist University, died on January 6, 2011, at age 64. His colleague Janis Bergman-Carton has written a special text on him
• Wlodzimierz Ksiazek, a Polish artist who lived, worked, and showed his work in the northeastern United States for thirty years, died under mysterious circumstances in May 2011. He was 59
• George Kuchar, an experimental filmmaker who had taught at the San Francisco Art Institute since 1971, died on September 6, 2011, at the age of 69. Among his best-known films are Sins of the Fleshapoids, Hold Me While I’m Naked, and Thundercrack!
• Stephen Mueller, a New York–based Color Field painter whose mystical work drew on the art of India, Persia, and Mexico, died on September 16, 2011, at the age of 63
• Vann Nath, a Cambodian painter who survived the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Security Prison 21, known as S21, died on September 5, 2011. He was 65 years old
• Karin Christine Nelson, a Bay Area author, administrator, and curator who specialized in textiles, passed away on June 22, 2011, at the age of 64. Her daughter Amalia Nelson-Croner has contributed an obituary that is published in the CAA website
• Anne Odom, a curator and historian of imperial Russian art who worked for more than thirty years at Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens in Washington, DC, died on August 25, 2011. She was 75 years old
• Margaret Olley, an Australian painter and a generous patron of the arts, died on July 26, 2011. She was 88 years old
• Efrén Ordoñez, a Mexican artist who worked in painting, sculpture, and stained glass, passed away on August 21, 2011. He was 84
• Damian Priour, a Texan sculptor who created public monuments, died on September 14, 2011, at the age of 61. He was also known for his community involvement in Austin
• Phillip Renaud, a Chicagoan artist and teacher who illustrated articles for Playboy in the 1960s, died on June 27, 2011. He was 77 years old
• Susan Shatter, a painter who specialized in watercolor and a regular colonist at Yaddo, died in July 2011. Born in 1953, she had served as secretary and president of the National Academy in New York
• Keith W. Tantlinger, an engineer who invented the modern cargo container, an object that has become increasingly popular with artists and designers, died on August 27, 2011. He was 92
• June Wayne, an accomplished artist who founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, which drew artists from around the world, passed away on August 23, 2011. She was 93 years old

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the November listing.