Passage: Arthur Mitchell and Robert Venturi
It happened this past week ... the loss of two very different artistic giants.
Arthur Mitchell was a trailblazing dancer.
Born the son of a building superintendent, he rose to become a star performer with the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine.
To watch Allegra Kent and Arthur Mitchell in a rehearsal for Balanchine's "Agon," click on the video player below:
He then went on to co-found the Dance Theater of Harlem, the country's first major African-American dance company.
"I actually bucked society," he told the New York Times earlier this year. "[Took] an art form that was three, four hundred years old ... and brought black people into it."
Arthur Mitchell was 84.
See Arthur Mitchell speak at a New York Public Library exhibition in 2009:
See also:
- Harlem ballet group perseveres ("60 Minutes," 10/25/99)
- dancetheatreofharlem.org
Robert Venturi was an architect of remarkable talent and vision.
In the 1960s, he broke with the Modernist school principle that "less is more" … insisting, to the contrary, that (as he put it) "less is a bore!"
Venturi designed buildings bursting with ornamentation and flourishes.
He's widely regarded, along with his wife, Denise Scott Brown, as one of the founders of Post-Modernism.
In 1991 Venturi was awarded architecture's prestigious Pritzker Prize.
Robert Venturi was 93.
For more info:
Story produced by Justin Hayter and Charis Satchell.
