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:

Allegra Kent & Arthur Mitchell in Balanchine's Agon rehearsal.mpg by Approximatesonata on YouTube

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:

Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts by The New York Public Library on YouTube

See also:


A 1967 modernist home designed by famed Philadelphia-based architect Robert Venturi sits on blocks near a bayside marina in Barnegat Light, N.J., Feb. 10, 2009, prior to its being moved by barge to Long Island.  Mel Evans/AP

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.

A design for the Vanna Venturi House, 1964, by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. CBS News

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.

       
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Story produced by Justin Hayter and Charis Satchell.

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