CAA News Today

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, photographers, scholars, architects, educators, museum directors, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. Notable deaths this summer include the artist Sarah Charlesworth and the former Museum of Modern Art director John Hightower. In addition, CAA has published a special obituary on Jens T. Wollesen, a historian of the art of medieval Italy and Cyprus who taught at the University of Toronto for many years.

• Gabriele Basilico, a prominent Italian photographer of architecture and urban landscapes, died on February 13, 2013. He was 68
• George Paul Horse Capture Sr., former deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and later senior counselor to its director, died on April 16, 2013. Also known as Nay Gyagya Nee (Spotted Otter), he was 75 years old
• Sarah Charlesworth, an artist and photographer associated with the Pictures Generation, died on June 25, 2013, at the age of 66
• Alex Colville, a celebrated Canadian painter who depicted realistic scenes of everyday life, passed away on July 16, 2013. He was 92 year old
• Martha Mayer Erlebacher, a figurative artist and longtime professor at the New York Academy of Art, died on June 22, 2013. She was 75
• Paul Feiler, an Anglo-German painter of lyrical abstraction, died on July 8, 2013, at age 95. He had taught for many years at the West of England College of Art (now Royal West of England Academy) in Bristol
• Mark Fisher, a set designer for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and U2 who trained as an architect, died on June 25, 2013. He was 66
• John Hightower, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1970 to 1971, died on July 6, 2013. Hightower also led the New York State Council of the Arts from 1964 to 1970 and later served as director of the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia, for thirteen years
• Elspeth kydd, a filmmaker, author, and scholar, passed away on April 9, 2013, at the age of 46. She had taught at the University of Toledo, the University of the West of England, and the University of the West Indies
• Henning Larsen, an award-winning architect who designed the Copenhagen Business School Dalgas Have and the Royal Danish Opera, died on June 22, 2013. He was 87 years old
• Virginia Pitts Rembert Liles, a professor of art history who served as chair of the Art Department at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, died on July 5, 2013. The fall 2012 issue of the Loupe published a profile on Liles’s long, distinguished career
• Cynthia Moody, a British filmmaker and editor of documentaries and advertisements, died in summer 2013, at the age of 89. Moody was also the caretaker of the estate of her Jamaican-born uncle, the sculptor Ronald Moody
• Norman Parish, an artist and art dealer whose gallery in Washington, DC, showed the work of African American artists, died on July 8, 2013. He was 75
• Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, an Australian-born ceramicist whose work was known internationally, passed away on July 5, 2013, age 78. The National Gallery of Victoria held a major retrospective of her pottery in 2006
• Alejandro Puente, an Argentinian artist who participated in the avant-garde scene at the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires, has died. Born in 1933, Puente was also associated with the geometría sensible movement
• Monica Ross, a performance artist, feminist, and professor at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, died on June 14, 2013. She was 63 years old
• William Z. Slany, chief historian of the US Department of State whose work helped to recover Jewish property looted by the Nazis, died on May 13, 2013. He was 84
• Jeffrey Smart, an Australian painter based in Italy who was known for his postindustrial urban landscapes, died on June 20, 2013. He was 91 years old
• Bert Stern, a commercial photographer and documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of Marilyn Monroe taken six weeks before her death, passed away on June 26, 2013. He was 83
• William Turner, an English artist who was a leading member of the Northern School of Lancashire painters, died on July 10, 2013, at the age of 93
• Jens T. Wollesen, a historian of medieval art who was a longtime professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, died on April 22, 2013. Born in 1947, Wollesen had recently completed a book, Acre or Cyprus: A New Approach to Crusader Painting around 1300. CAA has published a special obituary on the late professor
• Walter Zanini, a Brazilian professor of philosophy and the founder of the Brazilian Committee of History of Art, died on January 29, 2013. Born in 1925, Zanini served as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo from 1963 to 1978

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.