CAA News Today

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, teachers, filmmakers, curators, museum directors, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note are two obituaries—on the curator Anne L. Schroder and the art historian Francesca Weinmann—that are published by CAA.

• Meredith Allen, a photographer based in New York best known for her series of Melting Ice Pops, died on March 17, 2011. Born in 1964, Allen showed her work at Edward Thorp Gallery and Sarah Bowen Gallery
• Jihmye Collins, an activist, poet, and painter who helped found two nonprofit organizations in southern California—African American Writers and Artists and San Diego Writers, Ink—died on March 15, 2011. He was 71
• Donny George, an archaeologist, professor at Stony Brook University, and former director of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad who fought against its looting in 2003, died on March 11, 2011, at age 60. CAA News published an interview with George in 2007 and the text of his 2008 Convocation address about the looting
• Gabriel Laderman, a New Realist painter based in New York whose 1971 article in Artforum highlighted the like-minded figurative work of Sidney Tillim, Jack Beal, and Philip Pearlstein, died on March 10, 2011. He was 81 years old
• Sidney Lumet, the celebrated director of such films as Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, 12 Angry Men, and The Wiz, died on April 9, 2011, at the age of 86
• John McCracken, a sculptor and painter who emerged in the 1960s making a West Coast brand of Minimalism often called “finish fetish” or “light and space,” died on April 8, 2011. He was 76 years old
• Anne L. Schroder, curator and academic program coordinator at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, died on December 23, 2010, at the age of 56. Julie-Anne Plax has contributed a special text on her
• Leo Steinberg, an eloquent, erudite art historian whose articles and books on Renaissance, Baroque, and modern art—among them Other Criteria and The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion—have influenced innumerable students and scholars, died on March 13, 2011, at age 90. Steinberg was honored as CAA’s  Distinguished Scholar in 2002
• Hedda Sterne, an artist associated with the original Surrealists and the first-generation New York School but whose paintings often resisted such styles and categorizations, died on April 8, 2011, at age 100. She also appeared in the famous “Irascibles” photograph in Life magazine in 1951
• Toshiko Takaezu, an award-winning ceramic artist based in Honolulu who had taught for many years at Princeton University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, died on March 9, 2011. She was 88
• Peter Thursby, an English artist who created sculpture in bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel, often placed in public locations, died on January 6, 2011. He was 80 years old
• George Tooker, a Magic Realist artist known for mysterious, haunting work, including The Subway (1950), in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, died on March 27, 2011. He was 90
• Françoise “Francesca” Weinmann, founder of the Art History Department at the American University in Paris who taught there for three decades, died on March 4, 2011. George A. Wanklyn has written a remembrance on Weinmann, who was born in 1932

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA.

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, critics, architects, museum directors, collectors, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts.

• Maria Altmann, a woman who pursued the restitution of her family’s Gustav Klimt paintings from the Austrian government, died on February 7, 2011, at the age of 94
• Françoise Cachin, a French curator and art historian who specialized in Impressionism and Postimpressionism, died on February 4, 2011, at age 74. She helped found the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and also served as its director when it opened in 1986
• Vlassis Caniaris, an artist based in Athens, Greece, whose work was exhibited across Europe, died in March 2011 at the age of 83. He also served as chair of architecture at the National Technical University in Greece for twenty years
• Robert J. Clark, a longtime professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University and curator of the influential 1972 exhibition The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1876–1916, died on January 4, 2011. He was 73
• Edmund de Unger, a Hungarian-born businessman who developed property London and owned a major collection of Islamic fine and decorative art, died on January 25, 2011. He was 92
• B. H. Friedman, a novelist and the author of the biography Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible (1972) who started his career in real estate, died on January 4, 2011. He was 84
• Oleg Grabar, a renowned historian of Islamic art and architecture and professor emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, died on January 8, 2011, at age 81. Grabar won CAA’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art in 2005, among other others
• Ida Kay Greathouse, director of the Frye Art Museum in Seattle from 1966 to 1993, died on January 6, 2011. She was 105 years old
• Roy Gussow, an abstract sculptor based in New York whose large public works in stainless steel can be seen across the United States, died on February 11, 2011. He was 92
• John Keefe, a curator of decorative arts at the New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisiana since 1983, died on January 31, 2011, at the age of 69. He had organized exhibitions on antique glass, Wedgwood china, Fabergé eggs, and perfume bottles
• Donald Locke, a Guyanese-born British artist who had settled in Atlanta, Georgia, died on December 6, 2010, at the age of 80. He was known for his work in diverse media, including drawing, painting, ceramics, and sculpture
• Loretta Lorance, an architectural historian at the School of Visual Arts who wrote Becoming Bucky Fuller (2009), died on February 26, 2011. She had worked briefly for CAA in 2001 as a book cataloguer while completing her doctorate at the Graduate Center
• Tom Lubbock, a British artist and the chief art critic for the Independent and Independent on Sunday, died on January 9, 2011, at the age of 53
• Alfred K. Moir, a specialist in Italian Baroque art and professor of art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died on November 13, 2010. Born in 1924, Moir was instrumental in the growth of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art
• Malangatana Ngwenya, a celebrated African artist and political activist from Mozambique who served in his country’s parliament from 1990 to 1994, died on January 5, 2011. He was 74
• Dennis Oppenheim, an artist whose pioneering work in land, video, body, performance, and installation art in the 1960s and 1970s pushed aesthetic boundaries, died on January 22, 2011, at age 72. In his last fifteen years he had actively pursued outdoor sculpture and public commissions
• Charles O. Perry, an American sculptor trained as an architect whose public works were inspired by mathematics, died on February 8, 2011, at the age of 81. He won the Prix de Rome in 1964 and stayed in Italy for fourteen years to pursue art and architecture
• Milton Rogovin, a socially motivated photographer who documented the lower classes in his adopted hometown of Buffalo, New York, and across the United States, died on January 18, 2011. He was 101
• Paul Soldner, a ceramicist who emerged in California in the 1960s with Peter Voulkos, Ken Price, and John Mason, died on January 3, 2011, at the age of 89. A teacher at Scripps College for many years, he invented a pottery technique called American raku
• David Sorensen, a painter and sculptor based in Montreal who taught at Bishop’s University for nearly twenty years, died on February 17, 2011. He was 73
• Brian Stewart, an unorthodox English curator and the director of the Falmouth Art Gallery in Cornwall, died on December 12, 2010, at age 57. He authored The Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920 (1997) with Mervyn Cutten and wrote twenty more books on his own
• Ellen Stewart, the founder and artistic director of La MaMA Experimental Theater Club, a landmark venue for progressive theater and performance art in New York, died on January 13, 2011. She was about 91 years old
• Edgar Tafel, an architect who had trained with Frank Lloyd Wright, died on January 18, 2011, at the age of 98. The last surviving member of the Taliesin Fellowship, which first met in 1932, Tafel worked on his own projects across the state of New York and beyond
• Alan Uglow, an British-born, New York–based artist and musician whose work in abstract painting, installation, and photography inspired younger New York artists, died on January 20, 2011. He was 69 years old
• Don Van Vliet, a painter, rock musician, and avant-garde composer best known as Captain Beefheart, died on December 17, 2010, at age 69. He had retired from music in the early 1980s to concentrate on his abstract painting
• Doyald Young, a graphic designer, a logotype developer, and a professor at Art Center College of Design for thirty years, died on February 28, 2011, at age 84. His books include Logotypes and Letterforms (1993), Fonts and Logos (1999), and Dangerous Curves (2008)

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

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.

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, designers, scholars, critics, and other men and women whose work has had a significant impact on the visual arts. Of special note is Jean Miller’s text on Todd DeVriese, written especially for CAA.

• Todd DeVriese, an artist, educator, and dean of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, died on November 15, 2010, while at a conference in India. He was 49
• Helen Escobedo, a Mexican sculptor who explored modern materials in site-specific, outdoor, and public locations, died on September 16, 2010, at the age of 76. She was also a curator and director for several university-based and national museums and galleries
• S. Neil Fujita, a graphic designer, illustrator, and painter who worked on numerous jazz album covers for Columbia Records in the 1950s and on book jackets with his own firm, died on October 23, 2010, at age 89. He also taught for many years at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design.
• Robert Goodnough, a painter from the second generation of Abstract Expressionists whose diverse body of work touched on many modernist styles, died on October 2, 2010, at age 92. He showed his work at Tibor de Nagy and André Emmerich galleries in New York
• Kathryn Hixson, an art critic, former editor of the New Art Examiner, and adjunct professor in various departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, died on November 7, 2010, at the age of 55. She also curated several exhibitions in Texas and Illinois
• Eric Joisel, a French artist who created innovative, complex sculptures in origami, died on October 10, 2010, at the age of 53. His works can be found in the Louvre and in private collections worldwide
• Thomas Leavitt, founding director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, died on October 14, 2010, at the age of 80. He also organized more than one hundred exhibitions, including Earth Art with Willoughby Sharp in 1969, and wrote numerous catalogue essays
• Jack Levine, an American painter of Social Realism whose works contained biting satire and caricature, died on November 8, 2010, at the age of 95. His works can be found in major museums nationwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art
• Bernd Lohaus, a German artist who created his sculptures with blocks of stone and rugged beams of Azobe wood, died on November 4, 2010. Born in 1940, he studied under Joseph Beuys and settled in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1966
• Nathan Oliveira, a Bay Area painter who emerged in the 1950s as an Abstract Expressionist but later embraced figuration and landscape, died on November 13, 2010, at age 81. He was a longtime professor of art at Stanford University
• Rozsika Parker, a pioneering British feminist, art historian, psychotherapist, and author of The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and Making of the Feminine, died on November 5, 2010, at the age of 64. She collaborated with Griselda Pollock on two important books: Old Mistresses and Framing Women: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–1985
• Chuck Ramirez, an artist and graphic designer based in San Antonio who worked in large-scale photography and site-specific sculptural installations, died on November 6, 2010. He was 48
• Sylvia Sleigh, a celebrated figurative painter and devoted feminist who helped found SOHO20 Gallery in 1973, died on October 24, 2010, at the age of 94. Born in Wales but based in New York since 1961, Sleigh received CAA’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008
• Miriam Wosk, an illustrator who designed the first cover of Ms. magazine in 1971 but later concentrated on painting, drawing, and collage, died on November 5, 2010. She was 63

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

CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, curators, architects, filmmakers, museum directors, and other important figures in the visual arts.

• Ralph T. Coe, former director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and a collector and curator of Native American art, died on September 14, 2010, at the age of 81. Among his pioneering exhibitions are Sacred Circles: 2,000 Years of North American Indian Art (1976) and Lost and Found Traditions: Native American Art, 1965–1985 (1986)
• Tony Curtis, an actor in such films as The Defiant Ones and Some Like It Hot who was also known for Surrealist-inspired paintings, died on September 29, 2010. He was 85
• Robin Gibson, a curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London for his entire career, died on August 9, 2010, age 66. He established the museum’s photography department, focused on twentieth-century works, and even commissioned pieces for the collection, all while organizing exhibitions and authoring catalogues
• Jill Johnston, a feminist, dance critic for the Village Voice, and author of Lesbian Nation, died on September 18, 2010, at the age of 81. She also contributed to Art in America and wrote the controversial book Jasper Johns: Privileged Information
• Stephen Pace, a painter whose early work in the style of the New York School developed into expressionist-informed depictions of figures and landscapes, died on September 23, 2010, age 91. Emerging in the early 1950s in New York, he also taught art at Pratt Institute, Bard College, and American University
• Arthur Penn, a movie, television, and stage director whose innovative 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde paved the way for the New American Cinema, died on September 28, 2010. He was 88
• Rhonda Saad, an art historian and curator who was a doctoral student at Northwestern University, died on September 11, 2010, at the age of 31. The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, a CAA affiliated society for which she was treasurer, has established the Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Arab Art in her honor
• Johannes Spalt, an Austrian architect who cofounded the group Arbeitsgruppe 4 that brought modernism to rural Austria, died on October 2, 2010. He was 90
• Giorgio Torraca, a professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza and former deputy director of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, died on September 25, 2010. Born in 1927, he developed programs and courses on the conservation of masonry, mosaics, and earthen materials for nonscientists

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