Deaths (Obituaries)

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    Koyo Kouoh, Prominent Art World Figure, Is Dead at 57

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    She had recently been named to oversee next year’s Venice Biennale. She died just days before she was scheduled to announce its theme and title.Koyo Kouoh in 2023. As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, she had built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color.Tsele Nthane for The New York TimesKoyo Kouoh, one of the global art world’s most prominent figures, who had been slated to become the first African woman to curate the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday in Switzerland. She was 57.Her death was confirmed by the biennale’s organizers. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where in Switzerland she had died.The biennale said that Ms. Kouoh’s “sudden and untimely” death came just days before she was scheduled to announce the title and theme of next year’s event. The statement added that her death “leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art.”The Venice Biennale is arguably the art world’s most important event. Staged every two years since 1895, it always includes a large-scale group show, organized by the curator, alongside dozens of national pavilions, organized independently.A spokeswoman for the biennale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Ms. Kouoh’s death would mean for next year’s exhibition, which is scheduled to run from May 9 through Nov. 22.As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, Ms. Kouoh built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color from Africa and elsewhere, although her interests were global in reach. “I’m an international curator,” she said last December in an interview with the The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Margot Friedländer, Holocaust Survivor Who Found Her Voice, Dies at 103

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      She never spoke of her experience until after her husband’s death, when she returned to Berlin with a mission to tell her story, and to teach tolerance.Margot Friedländer, a Holocaust survivor who spent more than 60 years in exile (as she saw it) in New York City before returning to Germany in 2010 and finding her voice as a champion of Holocaust remembrance — work that made her a celebrity to young Germans and landed her on the cover of German Vogue last year — died on Friday in Berlin. She was 103.Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation, an organization promoting tolerance and democracy.“It helps me to talk about what happened,” she told the members of a UNICEF Club in 2023. “You young people help me because you listen. I don’t bottle it up anymore. I share my story for all of you.”Ms. Friedländer and her husband, Adolf — known in America as Eddie, for obvious reasons — arrived in New York in the summer of 1946. They settled into a small apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. He found work as comptroller of the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she became a travel agent.The couple had married at the camp where they were both interned; once in America, they never spoke of their shared experience. Mr. Friedländer was adamant about never returning to the country that had murdered their families. But when he died in 1997, Ms. Friedländer began to wonder what had been left behind.She had found a community at the Y, and, at the urging of Jo Frances Brown, who was then the program director there, she signed up for a memoir-writing class. It was weeks before she participated, however. The other students, all American-born, were writing about their families, their children, their pets. One night, unable to sleep, she began to write, and the first stories she told were her earliest childhood memories.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      William L. Porter, Designer of Classic American Cars, Dies at 93

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      As a senior designer at G.M., he helped create the exuberant, elongated shape of 1960s and ’70s cars like the Pontiac GTO, the Bonneville and the Trans Am.William L. Porter, a car designer who helped create the shapes of some of the most celebrated American vehicles of the late 1960s and early ’70s, died on April 25 at his home in Whitmore Lake, Mich. He was 93.His death was confirmed by his son, Adam, who did not specify a cause.As a senior designer at General Motors for more than three decades, Mr. Porter was intimately involved in determining the appearance of numerous cars that were uniquely American in their exuberant, elongated design and curvaceous forms. These were big, sleek cars for long, empty American roads, and for cities filled with the parking lots that could accommodate them, light years from the compact boxes made for Europe’s narrow streets.Mr. Porter made this sketch of the Pontiac GTO body in 1962, when he was just beginning to conceive of the car that would become the 1968 GTO.via Porter familyA 1969 iteration of the Pontiac GTO design.iStock Editorial/Getty Images PlusThe Pontiac GTO model produced in 1968 and 1969, with its endless hood and smooth, tapering back — its “monocoque shell form with elliptical pressure bulges over the wheels,” as Mr. Porter put it in an interview in 2000 — was one of his signature creations.G.M. made him chief designer at what it called the Pontiac 1 Studio in 1968, and he held that position until 1972, before going on to other senior design positions. In the early 1970s, he directed the design of the company’s LeMans, Catalina and Bonneville cars, which had tapering forms with jutting trunks, in keeping with his aesthetic.“I was taken with a plainer, curvaceous look featuring long, muscular shapes based on elliptical vocabulary,” Mr. Porter, a connoisseur and collector of American design, including Tiffany glass and Arts and Crafts furniture, said in an interview with Hot Rod magazine in 2007.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pierre Audi, Eminent Force in the Performing Arts, Dies at 67

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      After turning a derelict lecture hall into the daring Almeida Theater, he had a long career as a director and impresario in Europe and New York.Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario whose transformation of a derelict London lecture hall into the cutting-edge Almeida Theater was the opening act in a long career as one of the world’s most eminent performing arts leaders, died on Friday night in Beijing. He was 67.His death, while he was in China for meetings related to future productions, was announced on social media by Rachida Dati, the minister of culture in France, where Mr. Audi had been the director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 2018. The announcement did not specify a cause.Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded the Almeida, which opened in 1980 and swiftly became a center of experimental theater and music. He spent 30 years as the leader of the Dutch National Opera, and for part of that time was also in charge of the Holland Festival. For the past decade, he had been the artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York.The Almeida Theater in London. Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded it in 1980, and it soon became a center of experimental theater and music.View PicturesAll along, he continued working as a director at theaters around the world. Last year, when the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels cut ties with Romeo Castellucci halfway through his new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring,” the company turned to Mr. Audi as one of the few artists with the knowledge, experience and cool head to take over such an epic undertaking at short notice.“He profoundly renewed the language of opera,” Ms. Dati wrote in her announcement, “through his rigor, his freedom and his singular vision.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bob Filner, Mayor of San Diego Who Left Amid Scandal, Dies at 82

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      A progressive member of Congress for two decades, he resigned as mayor after 18 women accused him of sexual harassment.Bob Filner, a progressive Democrat who served two decades in Congress and then successfully ran for mayor of San Diego, promising to shake up City Hall — but whose career imploded within months amid a storm of sexual harassment charges — died on April 20. He was 82.His family announced the death. The announcement did not give a cause or say where he died, but The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that he died in an assisted living home in Costa Mesa, Calif.Mr. Filner, who was known for his brash and combative style, resigned as mayor under pressure in August 2013, after 18 women accused him of sexual misconduct in his time as mayor and during his years in Congress.The women included a retired Navy rear admiral, a university dean and Mr. Filner’s former communications director, who said that Mr. Filner had told her he wanted to see her naked and asked her to work without underwear.He left office denying any wrongdoing. But two months later, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of false imprisonment and misdemeanor charges of battery involving two other women. He was sentenced to three months’ home confinement and three years’ probation.“I never intended to be a mayor who went out like this,” he said.Mr. Filner, when he was the mayor of San Diego, at a news conference in July 2013 at which he apologized for his conduct toward women. He would resign the next month.Fred Greaves/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Horowitz, Leftist Turned Trump Defender, Is Dead at 86

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      Once a Marxist, he came to embrace hard-right positions, including the falsehood that Mr. Trump won in 2020, and to mentor Stephen Miller, later the Trump adviser.David Horowitz, a radical leftist of the 1960s who did a political about-face to become an outspoken conservative author and activist, writing that Barack Obama had “betrayed” America, and an ardent cheerleader for Donald J. Trump, died on Tuesday. He was 86.The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a think tank he founded in Southern California, said the cause was cancer. His wife, April Horowitz, said he died at his home in Colorado.Once a self-described Marxist, Mr. Horowitz executed a dizzying transit from the extreme left to the extreme right. He argued that the Black Lives Matter movement had fueled racial hatred; he opposed Palestinian rights; he denounced the news media and universities as tools of the left; and he falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, which Mr. Horowitz called “the greatest political crime” in American history.A prolific author since his early 20s, Mr. Horowitz published several pro-Trump books, including “Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America” (2017) and “The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America” (2021). The enemies he accused of totalitarian impulses were the mainstream Democrats Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, and Kamala Harris, then the vice president.Mr. Horowitz was a mentor to Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, whom he met when Mr. Miller was a California high school student fervidly critical of multiculturalism.At Duke University, Mr. Miller started a chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, a grass-roots advocacy group founded by Mr. Horowitz. Mr. Horowitz asked him to help coordinate an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on college campuses, according to Jean Guerrero, a biographer of Mr. Miller, writing in Politico in 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Thomas, Leader of the Band Pere Ubu, Dies at 71

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      David Thomas, the singer and songwriter who led Pere Ubu and other bands that stretched the parameters of punk and art-rock, died on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, England. He was 71.Mr. Thomas had suffered from kidney disease, but the announcement of his death, on Pere Ubu’s Facebook and Instagram sites, did not specify a cause, citing only “a long illness.” He lived in Brighton and Hove, but the announcement did not say if he died at home.Through five decades of recordings and performances, Mr. Thomas maintained an audacious, unpredictable, ornery and ambitious spirit. He perpetually defied and upended structures and expectations, and he reveled in dissonance and unsprung sounds.In the mid-1970s, at the dawn of punk rock, Pere Ubu described itself as “avant-garage.” And as punk developed its own constraints and conventions, Mr. Thomas purposefully warped or ignored them. When late-’70s punk bands sported T-shirts, leather and ripped jeans, he performed in a suit and tie. And while much of his music stayed grounded in rock, he also delved into chamber music, cabaret, electronics and improvisation.Mr. Thomas in performance in 1979. Big-boned and overweight, he wielded his bulk proudly onstage. David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHis voice was always distinctive: a liquid, androgynous tenor that he pushed to its limits and beyond — crooning, chanting, whooping, muttering, barking, burbling, yelling. His lyrics could be apocalyptic, free-associative, mocking, euphoric, cryptic or startlingly direct. Onstage, gesticulating vehemently, he veered between endearing and irascible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Virginia Giuffre, Voice in Epstein Sex Trafficking Scandal, Dies at 41

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      She accused Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, of recruiting her to join their sex-trafficking ring and sued Prince Andrew for sexual assault.Virginia Giuffre, a former victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” as a teenager to rich and powerful predators, including Prince Andrew of Britain, died on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was 41.Ms. Giuffre died by suicide, according to a statement from the family. Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) wrote in an Instagram post in March that she was days away from dying of renal failure after being injured in a crash with a school bus that she said was traveling at nearly 70 m.p.h.In 2019, Mr. Epstein was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with sex trafficking and conspiracy, and was accused of soliciting teenage girls to perform massages that became increasingly sexual in nature.Barely a month after he was apprehended, and a day after documents were released from Ms. Giuffre’s successful defamation suit against him, Mr. Epstein was found hanged in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. His death, at 66, was ruled a suicide.In 2009 Ms. Giuffre, identified then only as Jane Doe 102, had sued Mr. Epstein, accusing him and Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator and the daughter of the disgraced British media magnate Robert Maxwell, of recruiting her to join his sex-trafficking ring when she was a minor under the guise of becoming a professional masseuse.Ms. Giuffre in 2023 with a photo of herself as a teenager. She said she was recruited to Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring as a minor and that she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” among his powerful friends.Emily Michot/Miami Herald, via Tribune News Service, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roy Thomas Baker, Who Helped Produce ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ Dies at 78

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      Among the most successful music producers in the 1970s and ’80s, he helped churn out hits for acts like Queen, the Cars, Journey and Foreigner.Roy Thomas Baker, who was among the most successful music producers of the 1970s and 1980s and who helped produce Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the most unconventional pop hits, died at his home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on April 12. He was 78.His death was announced by Bob Merlis, a spokesman, who said in a statement that the cause was unclear.Besides Queen, Mr. Baker collaborated with other well-known bands like the Cars, Journey, Mötley Crüe and Foreigner while working as a producer and sound engineer at several recording studios over the course of his career.He is perhaps best known for helping to produce the nearly six-minute-long “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Mr. Baker said that the song was “ageless” because “it didn’t confine to any given genre of music.”“I thought it was going to be a hit,” said Mr. Baker, who produced the song with Queen. “We didn’t know it was going to be quite that big. I didn’t realize it was still going to be talked about 30 years later.”Roy Thomas Baker was born on Nov. 10, 1946, in Hampstead, England. He began his career at Decca Studios in London in 1963, working as a second engineer to Angus Boyd (Gus) Dudgeon, an English record producer who would later become known for his collaborations with Elton John; and Tony Visconti, an American producer who went on to work with artists like David Bowie and Marc Bolan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More