People in the News

People in the News

On 9 May 1996 Julie Andrews, star of Victor/Victoria, refused to be considered for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Broadway Musical because the Tony committee had not nominated the other cast members.

On 20 January 1993, poet Maya Angelou read "The Pulse of the Morning" at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton.

In July 1998 Tina Brown resigned after six years as editor of The New Yorker. She was replaced by David Remnick, who restored the original literary emphasis of the magazine. Brown and Ron Galotti joined with Miramax Films in establishing Talk Media to publish Talk magazine (in collaboration with Hearst Magazines), produce television programming, and publish books.

In 1994 dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown performed If You Couldn't See Me with her back and face turned away from the audience, creating what critic Jack Anderson called "a sculptural object come to life."

In 1998 Garth Fagan, whose first job on Broadway was as choreographer for The Lion King, won Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Astaire Awards for his work on the show.

In 1994 photographer Felice Frankel became artist in residence and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has helped scientists explain their work to the public through her visually arresting photographs.

Aaron Lansky, president of the National Yiddish Book Center, dedicated a new home for the institution in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1997. He was credited with saving more than 1.3 million Yiddish-language books from oblivion.

Ralph Lemon, choreographer, achieved international critical and popular acclaim when his ballet Bogus Pomp, set to music by Frank Zappa, had its premiere in Lyons, France, in fall 1990.

After twenty-five years as a documentary photographer whose work was better known than her name, Mary Ellen Mark had a retrospective show of her life's work in 1992; it opened at the International Center of Photography in New York City and traveled to fifteen other museums.

Francine Patterson, president of the Gorilla Foundation, revealed in November 1997 that ape art of the 1950s usually resembled that of the Abstract Expressionists then in its ascendence, but that the 1990s gorilla paintings of Koko and Michael "represent things in the real world," such as birds or balls. Koko and Michael have used sign language to explain their paintings, which may be seen at www.gorilla.org.

In 1998 Martin Puryear, a sculptor recognized for his skill in transforming wood and steel into innovative works of art, completed his eight-year collaboration with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh on the renovation of the 4,500 square-foot Vera List Courtyard at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

In 1999 movie fan Vance Rigo quit his job so he could be first in line for tickets to Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, explaining, "I had to set my priorities straight."

Beginning in 1975 and continuing through the 1980s and 1990s, environmental artist James Turrell used earth-moving equipment to transform the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in northern Arizona, into a work of art, finally announcing his completion date as 2000.

In April 1991 Mary Verde-Fletcher, a dancer who had been unable to stand or walk since childhood, performed as a dancer in Gypsy and Above at the Beck Center in Cleveland.

Video artist Bill Viola, whose works I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986) and The Messenger (1997) were influenced by his own near-death experience, was the subject of a 1998 survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York City.