Visual arts/museums

Artist and writer Russell Chatham. Chatham's paintings and lithographs of the West have been shown in many of the major galleries and museums west of the Mississippi. His works tend to shy away from grand scenes of the Rockies, in favor of more quiet views of fields, forests, and water. His writings often deal with the outdoors, fishing, and hunting. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)

Stephen Harvey, associate curator in the Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art. The museum is currently showing a retrospective of the films of director Vincente Minnelli, including "Meet Me in St. Louis" and "An American in Paris." Harvey has written the companion book to the retrospective.

Photographer Cornell Capa. He's a former president of Magnum Photos, Inc. a collective of the world's most renowned photographers whose founders include, Cornell's brother, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Maria Eisner and others. In 1967 he founded and directed the International Fund for Concerned Photography, an organization formed partly in memory of his brother, Robert, who was killed in Vietnam while on assignment. Cornell Capa has been a staff photographer for "Life" magazine and has published a number of books of photographs.

Artist-teacher Tim Rollins and his student Carlos Rivera. In collaboration with his South Bronx high-school students Rollins has created "excellent...slightly miraculous art." ("New York" Magazine). Since 1981, the group known as K.O.S. (for Kids of Survival -- mostly black and Puerto Rican students), has had showings of its work in over 50 shows. Now there's a showing of their own, "Amerika," in New York.

John L. Marion, chairman and chief auctioneer for Sotheby's auction house. Marion's brought the gavel down on more than 50-million dollars worth of fine art and antiquities, and presided over the recent explosion in art prices. Marion's written a beginners guide to collecting, called "The Best of Everything."

Photographer Bert Andrews. Since the early '50s, Andrews has been photographing the African-American theatre. There's now a collection of Andrews' photos, called "In The Shadow of the Great White Way: Images From the Black Theatre."

Writer John Updike. Updike is known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of some thirty novels and short stories, including the "Rabbit" novels. His latest effort is not a work of fiction, but a book on art. It's a collection of 23 essays called "Just Looking" that offers Updike's personal reactions to some of the world's masterpieces. He also comments on some of the recent "megashows" such as Renoir at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Andrew Wyeth's "Helga" paintings.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg looks at the influence of the word on the visual arts...starting with the Dada movement and the montage works of the 30s, up to current poster and electric sign work by Jenny Holzer.

Photojournalist Eugene Richards. His new book, "The Knife & Gun Club: Scenes from an Emergency Room," has been called the "modern day version of Dante's 'Inferno.'" It chronicles the trauma center of the Denver General Hospital where Richards spent twelve to twenty hours a day photographing and talking to the staff.

Architect and writer Christopher Alexander. His philosophy of "every man an architect" holds that ordinary people are the best designers of their own homes and workplaces, and that intuition in design should be trusted ahead of reason. He has worked this position out in books like A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, books that have made him a leading figure in a continuing schism in the architectural community against the `glass box' syndrome of modern architecture. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)