CAA News Today

In its semimonthly roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, collectors, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note is a text from Patricia Mainardi on Filiz Burhan for CAA.

• Julie Apap, a ceramicist who lived, worked, and taught art in Malta, died on March 16, 2011. She was 62 years old
• Martha Brincklow, the founder of the International Studies Program at Saint Petersburg College in Florida who led students on tours of the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, and Tate Gallery, died on January 14, 2011. She was 95
• Filiz Burhan, a long-time professor of art history at the American University in Paris whose work opened new directions in the study of Symbolism, died on May 23, 2011, at 60 years of age. Patricia Mainardi has written a special text on her for CAA
• Robert Fluhr, an artist who taught for thirty years in the Philadelphian high schools and led sculpture classes for the blind and visually impaired at the Allens Lane Art Center, died on June 20, 2011. He was 84
• Hoda Garnett, an Egyptian-born news photographer who began her career in the US Navy in the 1950s and whose work appeared in Life magazine, died on October 13, 2011. She was 84 years old
• Beatrice Gersh, an arts patron in Los Angeles who was instrumental in founding the Museum of Contemporary Art in her city, died on October 9, 2011, at age 87
• Frank B. Gettings, who spent thirty years as a curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, died on August 4, 2011. He was 80 years old
• Shifra Goldman, a political activist and a pioneering scholar of Latin American and Chicano art who taught for twenty years in southern Californian institutions, died on September 11, 2011. She was 85
• Addie James, a folk artist based in North Carolina who created colorful paintings of family life in the South, died on July 17, 2011. She was 67
• Szeto Keung, a Chinese American artist based in New York who showed his mixed-media work extensively in Taiwan and Hong Kong, died on September 5, 2011. He was 62
• Friedrich Kittler, a German media theorist who taught internationally, most recently at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, died on October 18, 2011, at age 68
• Mathieu Lefèvre, a Canadian artist who lived and worked in Brooklyn, died on October 18, 2011. He was 30
• Robert Loughlin, an artist and scavenger who advised collectors in modern design and furniture, including Andy Warhol, died on September 27, 2011. He was 62 years old
• Ruth Mellinkoff, a historian of medieval art and an author of cookbooks, died on Febuary 26, 2011. She was 86 years old
• James More, a Scottish design-studio manager and an emeritus professor of design at Northumbria University in England, died on September 27, 2011, at age 65
• William Mostyn-Owen, an artist historian who specialized in the Italian Renaissance and served as Bernard Berenson’s bibliographer, died on May 2, 2011. He was 81 years old
• Sadamasa Motonaga, a Japanese painter who began his career in the Gutai movement, died on October 3, 2011. He was 88
• Werner Muensterberger, a psychoanalyst, art historian, and collector of African art, died on March 6, 2011. He had reached the age of 98
• John Neuhart, an American designer who taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and who, with his wife Marilyn, was a colleague of Ray and Charles Eames, died on September 19, 2011. He was 82
• Malcolm H. Preston, an art critic and historian who taught for many years at Hofstra University, died on July 10, 2011, at age 91. He was also a figurative and landscape painter
• Richard Randell, a sculptor and filmmaker who taught art at Stanford University, died on May 25, 2011, at the age of 81. He also helped found the World of Languages, which preserved and studied disappearing Kenyan and Tanzanian song, poetry, and dance
• Jehangir Sabavala, a pioneering artist in postcolonial India whose work was always at odds with popular contemporaneous styles, died on September 2, 2011. He was 89
• Pamela Hemenway Simpson, a historian of art and architecture at Washington and Lee University who served as president of the Southeastern College Art Conference, died on October 4, 2011, at the age of 65
• Bernard Smith, a renowned Australian intellectual and author whose academic leadership helped form the discipline of art history in his country, died on September 2, 2011. He was 94 years old
• Ronald Thomason, a Texan sculptor, designer, and teacher, died on August 4, 2011, on his 80th birthday
• Jacques Vilain, a French curator at the Musée Rodin in Paris who later became its director, died on September 23, 2011
• Richard DeLos Wells, a professor of art, art history, and American studies at Brigham Young University in Hawai‘i, died on July 26, 2011, at the age of 63

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 December listing.