Category Archives: Birthdays

Leontyne Price: born on February 10, 1927

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Leontyne Price received many honorary degrees as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1965), the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), and the National Medal of Arts (1985). Her many recordings earned nineteen Grammy Awards, and she received a special Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. For her performance on Live From Lincoln Center, Leontyne Price, Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, Price received the 1982 Emmy award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.

Price has been described as a “lirico-spinto” soprano with a 3-1/2 octave range. Her rock-solid vocal technique and purity and her dramatic flair have been combined to create a mix suitable both for the opera and concert stage.

– See more at: http://afrovoices.com/leontyne-price-biography/

NPR: “Heifetz and Kreisler: Setting Standards for the Violin”

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HeifetzKreisler

Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler were both born on Feb. 2 — Kreisler in 1875 and Heifetz in 1901. But the two men share more than just a birthday. Music commentator Miles Hoffman joins Renee Montagne to discuss the two famous fiddlers and how they each set new standards for the art of playing the violin.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7121113

Loren MacIver: Born February 2, 1909

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lm

Loren MacIver
(1909–1998)
Loren MacIver …was essentially a self-taught painter, having attended classes at the Art Students League only briefly at ages ten and eleven. Her work was included in group shows at New York’s Contemporary Arts Gallery in 1933 and 1942…The Museum of Modern Art acquired one of her works in 1935, well before her first one-person exhibition in 1938 at Marian Willard’s East River Gallery. From 1936 to 1939 she worked on the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration.
http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/maciver-bio.htm

 

Tracking Loren MacIver~ http://brooklynrail.org/2008/03/artseen/tracking
Collection at The Met~ http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!/search?artist=MacIver,%20Loren$Loren%20MacIver

Betty Parsons~ January 31, 1900-July 23, 1982

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[Betty] Parsons’s role as a leading promoter of abstract art is well known. Less well known is that she was an artist.

“Betty led a double life,” a nephew, William P. Rayner, said. “Being an artist was her first priority. That’s why she was such a good dealer and that’s why her artists liked her.”
FROM http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/28/nyregion/betty-parsons-s-2-lives-she-was-artist-too.html?pagewanted=all

Once referred to as “the den mother of Abstract Expressionism,” Betty Parsons was an early advocate of the great Abstract Expressionists, including Pollock, Rothko, Reinhardt, Still and Newman, long before they all achieved notoriety. Her midtown gallery, which opened in 1946 (and closed every summer so that Parsons could focus on her own art), gave the Abstract Expresionist artists their first large-scale exposure, making it one of the most prestigious art galleries in New York.
FROM http://www.theartstory.org/gallery-betty-parsons.htm

“I’ve learned a great deal about business, but I wasn’t a businesswoman,” Betty Parsons told Grace Lichtenstein in a profile that originally ran in the March 1979 issue of ARTnews, published just three years before Parsons’s death, in 1982.
FROM http://www.artnews.com/2017/06/16/from-the-archives-betty-parsons-gallerist-turned-artist-takes-the-spotlight-in-1979/

Throughout her storied career as a gallerist, she maintained a rigorous artistic practice, painting during weekends in her Long Island studio. Parsons’ eye for innovative talent stemmed from her own training as an artist and guided her commitment to new and emerging artists of her time, impacting the canon of Twentieth-Century art in the United States. Includes slideshow and biography~
FROM http://www.alexandergray.com/artists/betty-parsons?view=slider#2

 

Jackie Robinson: January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972

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robinsonLIFE With Jackie Robinson: Rare and Classic Photos of an American Icon

When Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped onto Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, he not only changed the face of professional baseball in America. In ways subtle and profound — ways that have been debated, dissected and celebrated in books, films, popular songs, academic circles and casual conversations in the long decades since — he changed the nation itself.

Here, LIFE.com offers a selection of both classic and, in some cases, rare pictures that paint a portrait of a man whose dignity, competitive fire and grace under pressure set him indelibly and inevitably apart from his peers and his rivals.

http://time.com/3813840/life-with-jackie-robinson-rare-and-classic-photos-of-an-american-icon/

Artist Birthday Quiz for 1/31~

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What artist is perhaps best known for the two bronze lions that mark the entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago Building?

In 2000, the AIA recognized one of which architect’s buildings as the fourth most significant structure of the twentieth century?

Answers here~ https://schristywolfe.com/2015/01/31/january-31/

Artist Birthday Quiz for 1/29~

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This painter played an important role in the formative years of the New York School, but did not achieve recognition for his own work until late in his career.

Despite 27 years of  clashes with Disney, this artist and children’s book author rose through the ranks to become both illustrator and screenwriter before finally leaving.

Answers here~ https://schristywolfe.com/2015/01/29/january-29/