On Tuesday, February 26, the Dance Theater of Harlem held its Vision
Gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. Entertainment industry
veteran Vanessa Williams was honored for her extraordinary career
accomplishments in film, television, music and the Broadway stage.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, who arose from the world of graffiti to become an
internationally acclaimed artist, has been dead since 1988, but his life
and work is expansively invoked at the Gagosian Gallery in lower
Manhattan.
Surrounded by a montage of vintage photographs, more than a dozen from
his vast collection, Chuck Stewart is in a comfortable cove to relate
bits and pieces of his remarkable life. “I guess if I hadn’t been a
photographer, I might have been an economist since I did pretty well in
those classes in college,” he said without a trace of regret. And at 85, with an archive of photos of notables to his credit,
including a veritable pantheon of jazz greats, Stewart appears quite
content to rest on his considerable laurels.
