Museums

Art historian Steven Naifeh (NAY-fay) and writer Gregory White Smith. They've co-written a biography of painter Jackson Pollock. The pair spent eight years and conducted more than 2-thousand interviews to understand the life and work of one of the 20th century's most influential artists. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)

Food historian William Woys Weaver. Weaver is a leading expert on the culinary traditions and cooking techniques of the 18th and 19th centuries, and he often is often consulted by restoration organizations such as Old Sturbridge Village and Colonial Williamsburg. Weaver also tracks the emergence of regional American cuisines, often focusing on what the common workers, farmers, and slaves ate. Weaver's new book, "America Eats," examines American foods as a valid form of folk art. It also features traditional recipes adapted for the modern kitchen.

Anthropologist Sally Price. In her new book, "Primitive Art in Civilized Places," she attacks the West's desire to own the art of native peoples. She says the West's attitude toward those peoples is one of arrogance, snobbery, and patronization; and that all too often there's no effort made to learn about, or even identify, the actual artists who's work ends up in museums and homes throughout the First World. Price's academic life alternates between her studies of the Maroon people of Suriname and teaching assignments in the United States.

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)

Contributor Ilene Segalove takes us on a tour of The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a Los Angeles museum of "unnatural history." The museum features exhibits of the bizarre and improbable, such as the "Deprong Mori," a South American bat that uses X-ray to fly through solid objects, or the way extreme ultraviolet rays appear to restore the flesh to a skeleton.

Cartoonist Howard Cruse. He draws a comic strip called "Wendel" that follows the life of a young gay man. The strip is a regular feature in the gay and lesbian newsmagazine The Advocate. Recent "Wendel" strips have just been collected in the book Wendel On The Rebound, published by Saint Martin's Press.

Photographer Larry Sultan. In a photography exhibit now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Sultan is represented by work from a project he began in 1983 about his family's history. A key feature of the work, and a feature that appears in all of Sultan's work, is capturing subjects at "off" moments, situations where they least expect, or wish, themselves to be photographed.

Artist Chris Burden. He gained fame as a conceptual artist in 1971 when he had a friend shoot him in the arm as part of a performance piece at a Santa Ana gallery. Burden's concern with realism (one critic calls it his greatest strength and greatest weakness) is reflected in a touring retrospective of his works, which include sculpture, and also artifacts of his conceptual pieces.

Callahan was paralyzed in a drunk driving accident. Since then, he's become comic strip artist whose irreverent cartoons focus on the experiences of the disabled. Callahan's new memoir is called Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot.

Spiegelman edits the underground comics magazine Raw. He is best known for graphic novel Maus, about his father's experiences in Nazi concentration camps, which was widely celebrated. Raw recently featured a new chapters in that story.

The Canada-based Rybczynski sought to build a shed, but ended up designing a house for himself. He details the design and construction of his home in a new book, The Most Beautiful House in the World.