Month: April 2019

Just a couple of days ago, Severine Vilbert strolled by Notre Dame with her eldest daughter on a chilly but brilliantly sunny day. The blossoms were out and the cathedral glistened in the light. 

“We were looking at Notre Dame and saying, ‘Wow, it’s such a beautiful monument, how proud we were to be Parisian and live in this beautiful city,'” Vilbert recalled, not bothering to fight back tears. “And then, it was like a nightmare for us.”

On Tuesday, Vilbert retraced her footsteps in a transformed Paris. A few drops of rain fell from a slate grey sky, as she joined thousands of Parisians and tourists paying a vigil of sorts to a smoking-but-still-cherished icon. 

The inferno that raced through the more than 850-year-old cathedral Monday night destroyed most of the roof. Its 90-meter (295-foot) spire collapsed in the blaze, causing selfie-snapping onlookers to gasp.

Investigators are scouring for clues from the fire that they consider likely, for the moment, accidental. 

“I’m a Christian. I’m a Catholic. I think it’s really terrible about what’s happened,” George Castro, a French-Colombian, said of the blaze that occurred just a week before Easter. “It’s really, really sad.” 

But amazingly, no lives have been lost and priceless treasures were saved, along with Notre Dame’s stunning rose window. Reports quoted experts assessing the building as structurally sound. 

The fire is the latest assault on one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Over the past few years, Paris has weathered two massive terrorist attacks that bookended 2015, and most recently the yellow vest crisis that defaced some of its most prestigious landmarks and deeply divided French citizens. 

Some Parisians, like Nicolas Chouin, believe the blaze can help to reconcile a fractured France. 

“It’s something beyond us, beyond our little problems of everyday life,” he said, gazing at the skeleton of the cathedral’s roof. “Of course, it doesn’t solve all the political issues — let’s see if it’s just a parenthesis.”

President Emmanuel Macron canceled a major address to the nation Monday night, in which he was expected to outline measures to assuage the yellow vest anger, to race to the scene of the fire. 

“We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautiful,” he vowed on Tuesday, promising to restore the edifice within five years.

Companies and business tycoons have lost no time to turn his promises into reality, donating hundreds of millions of dollars within hours of the blaze. The French government and Paris city hall have promised to donate hundreds of millions more. 

“We’re French, we’re proud of being French, and we’re going to rebuild it,” Vilbert said. “It’s going to take many years, but it’s going to be great.” 

Tourists and foreign residents, who flock to the French capital yearly by the millions, are just as devastated. 

“There’s beauty, there’s history, there’s culture — it represents Paris,” said Briton Rhia Patel, who studies French literature at the Sorbonne University. “It’s what people travel long and far to come and find.” 

Staring at the charred remains, retired Paris firefighter Philippe Facquet offered an expert assessment of the challenges that faced his former colleagues. 

“Attacking this kind of fire is very difficult,” he said, “because there are narrow spiral staircases, so carrying hoses and other heavy material is very difficult. And the adjacent roads are very narrow — so a lot of complications.” 

Then Facquet offered his personal assessment — that he felt “very bad.”

“It’s our mother, it’s our patrimony, it’s the symbol of Paris,” he said. “Our heart is bleeding.” 
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Notre Dame in Paris is not the first great cathedral to suffer a devastating fire, and it probably won’t be the last.

In a sense, that is good news. A global army of experts and craftspeople can be called on for the long, complex process of restoring the gutted landmark.

The work will face substantial challenges — starting immediately, with the urgent need to protect the inside of the 850-year-old cathedral from the elements, after its timber-beamed roof was consumed by flames.

The first priority is to put up a temporary metal or plastic roof to stop rain from getting in. Then, engineers and architects will begin to assess the damage.

Fortunately, Notre Dame is a thoroughly documented building. Over the years, historians and archeologists have made exhaustive plans and images, including minutely detailed, 3-D laser-scanned re-creations of the interior.

Duncan Wilson, chief executive of the conservation organization Historic England, said Tuesday that the cathedral will need to be made secure without disturbing the debris scattered inside, which may provide valuable information — and material — for restorers.

“The second challenge is actually salvaging the material,” he said. “Some of that material may be reusable, and that’s a painstaking exercise. It’s like an archaeological excavation.”

Despite fears at the height of the inferno that the whole cathedral would be lost, the structure appears intact. Its two rectangular towers still jut into the Paris skyline, and the great stone vault stands atop heavy walls supported by massive flying buttresses. An edifice built to last an eternity withstood its greatest test.

Tom Nickson, a senior lecturer in medieval art and architecture at London’s Courtauld Institute, said the stone vault “acted as a kind of fire door between the highly flammable roof and the highly flammable interior” — just as the cathedral’s medieval builders intended.

Now, careful checks will be needed to determine whether the stones of the vaulted ceiling have been weakened and cracked by the heat. If so, the whole vault may need to be torn down and re-erected.

The cathedral’s exquisite stained-glass rose windows appear intact but are probably suffering “thermal shock” from intense heat followed by cold water, said Jenny Alexander, an expert on medieval art and architecture at the University of Warwick. That means the glass, set in lead, could have sagged or been weakened and will need minute examination.

Once the building has been stabilized and the damage assessed, restoration work can begin. It’s likely to be an international effort.

“Structural engineers, stained-glass experts, stone experts are all going to be packing their bags and heading for Paris in the next few weeks,” Alexander said.

One big decision will be whether to preserve the cathedral just as it was before the fire, or to take a more creative approach.

It’s not always a straightforward choice. Notre Dame’s spire, destroyed in Monday’s blaze, was added to the Gothic cathedral during 19th-century renovations. Should it be rebuilt as it was, or replaced with a new design for the 21st century?

Financial and political considerations, as well as aesthetic ones, are likely to play a part in the decision.

Getting materials may also be a challenge. The cathedral roof was made from oak beams cut from centuries-old trees. Even in the 13th century, they were hard to come by. Nickson said there is probably no country in Europe with big enough trees today.

Alternatives could include a different type of structure made from smaller beams, or even a metal roof — though that would be unpopular with purists.

The restored building will have to reflect modern-day health and safety standards. But Eric Salmon, a former site manager at the Paris cathedral, said it is impossible to eliminate all risk.

“It is like a street accident. It can happen anywhere, anytime,” said Salmon, who now serves as technical director at the Notre Dame cathedral in Strasbourg, France.

The roof of Strasbourg’s Notre Dame was set ablaze during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. It took up to five years to restore the wooden structure. Nowadays the roof is split into three fire-resistant sections to make sure one blaze can’t destroy it all. Smoke detectors are at regular intervals.

Still, Salmon said that what worked in Strasbourg may not be suitable for Paris. Each cathedral is unique.

“We are not going to modify an historic monument to respect the rules. The rules have to be adapted to the building,” he said.

Experts agree the project will take years, if not decades. Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization, said restoring Notre Dame “will last a long time and cost a lot of money.” A government appeal for funds has already raised hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) from French businesses.

But few doubt that Notre Dame will rise again.

“Cathedrals are stone phoenixes — reminders that out of adversity we may be reborn,” said Emma Wells, a buildings archaeologist at the University of York.

“The silver lining, if we can call it that, is this allows for historians and archaeologists to come in and uncover more of its history than we ever knew before. It is a palimpsest of layers of history, and we can come in and understand the craft of our medieval forebears.”
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A Hong Kong artist has created an artificial intelligence (AI) robot which creates its own paintings.

Victor Wong took three years to build and program the robot called A.I Gemini and teach it artistic techniques.

Randomness has been written into its algorithm, meaning Wong does not know what it will paint before it begins.

The project is called ‘Far Side of the Moon’. The robot’s AI was fed NASA 3D images of the moon and imagery taken by China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover. It captured images of the dark side of the moon in January.

A.I Gemini takes an average of 50 hours to create a blend of landscapes on traditional, fresh xuan paper made from bark and rice straw. The average price for a piece on sale in London is £10,000 ($13,000).

Wong designed the robot to use the ancient Chinese art of shuimo to create its paintings, using mainly black ink and water.

Wong said it felt good to display the work and have people praise it.  Asked if work created by robot can be art, Wong added: “I think so, at this moment.”

 
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A blustering bureaucrat fills a form out with your personal details and hands you a badge declaring you an inspector qualified to police Communist-run Cuba’s cultural sector under a controversial new decree.

This interactive performance by Cuban artist Leandro Feal, 33, is one of the politically charged artworks in a parallel exhibit on the sidelines of Havana’s 13th Biennial arts celebration that kicked off this weekend.

The exhibit underscores both simmering tensions in Cuba’s arts scene and artists’ growing independence from the state, which has dominated all aspects of society since the 1959 revolution, including promoting culture.

The official biennial program of more than 300 works by artists from 52 countries is taking over Havana’s museums, galleries and open spaces, including its seafront, until May 12.

Meanwhile, the parallel program of exhibits is sprawling — often in private studios and galleries — and reaches into the most remote neighborhoods.

The growth of tourism and the private sector over the past decade, as well as greater freedom to travel and internet access, have enabled artists to work more independently of state institutions.

While most of these exhibits are not explicitly political, artists say the greater independence allows them to address politically sensitive issues more freely.

“The biennial at the end of the day is a kind of mirror of Cuban society where the independent scene is growing,” said Abel Gonzalez Fernandez, 27, curator of the group show that includes Feal’s performance and works by some of Cuba’s top young artists, like Reynier Leyva Novo.

Some say Cuba’s cultural institutions are ideologically outdated and too strapped for cash to promote them sufficiently. The so-called biennial, impressive as it is, was last held four years ago.

The power of Decree 349 

Gonzalez Fernandez and others believe the government last year introduced Decree 349 partly to rein them in. It gives inspectors the right to shut down exhibits and performances deemed to violate Cuba’s revolutionary values.

The government says the legislation targets offensive and mediocre content. But it agreed in December to revise the accompanying regulations after broad outcry, and since then, it has not expressed itself again on the topic.

“They tried to impose a moratorium on the topic, but we have artists who are getting imprisoned,” said Feal.

Self-proclaimed “artivist” Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who led a vocal campaign against Decree 349, was arrested Friday after staging a small but politically charged performance in his neighborhood.

In the show, competitors carrying the flag of Cuba’s old-time foe, the United States, ran a race, in homage to the Cuban who interrupted Havana’s mass May Day march in 2017 by running in front of it waving the Stars and Stripes.

Otero Alcantara told Reuters he had been briefly detained a week earlier and warned not to stage his planned performance. He was released Monday.

Rights groups say Cuba often uses short-term detentions to repress public criticism.

Asked by Reuters about the arrest, the head of Cuba’s National Council of Visual Arts, Norma Rodriguez, said at a news conference: “As far as I know he is an activist, not an artist.”

‘Testing the limits of what’s possible’

Cuba considers dissidents to be mercenaries in the pay of the United States trying to subvert the government. A few other artists who have protested Decree 349 say they have also been harassed by authorities.

Some supporters of the Cuban government accuse activist artists of trying to boost their cachet or get offered asylum through altercations with the state.

A top cultural official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Decree 349 had nothing to do with the biennial and described it as an inclusive event showing the work of several artists who had publicly criticized it.

Cuban artists who are critical of the government have often used the biennial — which attracts international collectors, gallery owners and critics — to raise awareness of the restraints on freedom of expression in Cuba.

“We are testing the limits of what’s possible,” said Gonzalez Fernandez.

Tania Bruguera, one of Cuba’s most famous living artists, who has had frequent run-ins with authorities, said she would not participate in this year’s biennial because the government was using it to “clean its international image in the wake of the campaign against Decree 349.”
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Jordan Peele’s recent horror blockbuster “Us” follows his 2017 directorial debut with the Oscar-winning horror film “Get Out.” Critics and audiences have hailed the African American filmmaker as a pioneer of black horror films as metaphors for social, economic and racial injustice. 

“Us” explores the monster lurking within ourselves in the form of the evil doppelganger.

Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o describes her dual characters of Adelaide Wilson, a middle-class mother and wife, and Red, her disturbing double. 

“Adelaide is riddled with this trauma from her childhood that she cannot explain or shake off. And she is convinced, as they are on their way to their summer home in Santa Cruz, that something bad is going to happen. And she is proven right when at the end of the day, these four shadowy figures show up at the top of their driveway, and their worst nightmare ensues.” 

Peele explores the idea of the shadow self, “which comes up in many cultures, many mythologies. And it tends to be this sense that there is a darker self that we suppress, and we suppress it because we are afraid of what it means. It holds our guilt, and our evil, really.” 

Peele said he uses horror to address race relations and the growing socioeconomic divide in America. His previous horror film “Get Out” was about wealthy elderly white people extending their lives by having their brains transplanted into young black people.

“Us” is about the reckoning of privileged Americans by their disadvantaged selves.

“It’s more about what we’ve become as a country and a retribution of how we are treating each other, all centered around how a family deals with being attacked by themselves,” said producer Sean McKittrick.

“Oftentimes, we feel that the monster is from outside of ourselves, outside our borders, outside our homes. In this story, the monster is really within our very selves, and it’s about embracing that or at least recognizing it,” Nyong’o said.

Minorities in lead roles

Horror film expert Andrew Scahill said Peele epitomizes the era of black horror movies.

“I think we are at an incredibly exciting time for horror right now. Minorities taking the reins of this genre, which to be honest, it has been really exclusionary, if not antagonistic, toward them in the past.”

Scahill said in past horror movies, such as George Romero’s iconic 1968 horror flick “Night of Living Dead,” black actors were either killed off within the first 10 minutes or used as tropes to save white leading characters before getting killed off.

Now, he said, Peele establishes them as the main characters who are here to stay.

“Jordan Peele does not plan on casting a white actor in a lead role because that movie has been done,” Scahill said.

Anxiety of millennials

Scahill said the concept of the monster within is as old as Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein. The same applies to using horror as a platform for social commentary.

“It goes back even further,” he said. “When I show ‘Nosferatu,’ I show the image of that vampire against caricatures of Jewish people during the period. ‘King Kong’ is a metaphor for the slave trade. ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ depending on who you talk to, is about communism or McCarthyism or consumerism, or all of those things. And that is one exciting thing about horror — the instability of the characters. Representing our different anxieties.”

Scahill said in millennial horror films, the killing force cannot be as easily identified and, consequently, controlled. He said such themes as those explored in “Us” reflect the anxiety of millennials losing control of their socioeconomic and environmental well-being, and their inability to change the system.

“Bodies being puppeted against their will seems to be a strain of contemporary horror. And if you think about the anxieties of young people today entering the workforce and their crippling debt, it’s an endless war. It makes sense that that’s horror today.”
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The fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday prompted fund-raising appeals in the United States, as people horrified by the blaze began making commitments to restore a global landmark even before the flames were extinguished.

The New York-based French Heritage Society and the Go Fund Me crowdsourcing platform were among the first to offer help for a cathedral that is a must-see destination for visitors to Paris from all over the world.

French President Emmanuel Macron said an international campaign would be launched to raise funds for the rebuilding of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The French Heritage Society, an American non-profit group dedicated to preserving French architectural and cultural treasures, launched a web page on Monday to raise money for the cathedral’s restoration.

“Notre Dame is obviously an architectural marvel and most certainly a monument that should be restored,” Jennifer Herlein, the executive director of the society, said by phone.

Herlein could not immediately say how much her organization had raised for Notre Dame on Monday. Eventually, the funds raised will go directly to the cathedral, she said.

The organization, which was founded in 1982, gave two grants last year totaling more than $430,000 for restoration projects at France’s national library, she said.

50 campaigns 

At the website GoFundMe, more than 50 campaigns related to the cathedral fire had been launched globally on Monday, John Coventry, a spokesman for Go Fund Me, said by email.

“In the coming hours we’ll be working with the authorities to find the best way of making sure funds get to the place where they will do the most good,” Coventry said.

Some of the Go Fund Me campaigns had not listed any money raised by late Monday, and several joke campaigns were created through Go Fund Me to help Quasimodo, the fictional character in Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“I think the challenge will be whether or not people who give the money agree with those who are doing the rebuilding about how the cathedral should be rebuilt,” said Lisa Bitel, a professor of religion and history at the University of Southern California.

“This is a national monument in France and they will not spare money to rebuild,” Bitel said. “I don’t think the Americans will get much of a say in how to do it.”

Notre Dame Cathedral has looked to international donors for past renovation efforts.

In 2017, Michel Picaud, president of Friends of Notre Dame De Paris, told the New York Times his group planned to organize gala dinners, concerts and other events to raise funds in France and the United States for restoration work at the cathedral.

 
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Notre Dame, a survivor of wars and revolutions, has stood for centuries as not merely the greatest of the Gothic cathedrals and a towering jewel of Western architecture.

It has stood, in the words of one shell-shocked art expert, as “one of the great monuments to the best of civilization.”

And so it was that across the globe Monday, a stunned and helpless art world wept alongside the people of France as a massive fire ravaged the beloved cathedral.

“Civilization is just so fragile,” said Barbara Drake Boehm, senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval Cloisters branch in New York, her voice shaking as she tried to put into words what the cathedral meant. “This great hulking monument of stone has been there since 1163. It’s come through so many trials.”

“It’s not one relic, not one piece of glass — it’s the totality,” she said, struggling to find words expansive enough to describe the cathedral’s significance. “It’s the very soul of Paris, but it’s not just for French people. For all humanity, it’s one of the great monuments to the best of civilization.”

Boehm spoke shortly before the Paris fire chief announced that firefighters had been able to finally save the structure, including its two main towers. Much of the roof was destroyed.

The exact cause of the blaze wasn’t known, but French media quoted the fire brigade as saying it was “potentially linked” to a 6 million-euro ($6.8 million) renovation project on the church’s spire and its 250 tons of lead. The Paris Prosecutor’s office, which was investigating, said it was treating it as an accident.

Construction on Notre Dame — French for “Our Lady” — began in the 12th century and continued for nearly 200 years. It sustained damage and fell into neglect during the French Revolution, but received renewed attention following the 1831 publication of Victor Hugo’s novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” This led to two decades of restorations, including the cathedral’s famous flying buttresses and a reconstructed spire.

While most kings were crowned elsewhere, Napoleon Bonaparte made sure he was crowned there in 1804, and married there in 1810.

Experts note that Notre Dame is an aesthetically smooth synthesis of different centuries. “It all blends together so harmoniously,” said Nancy Wu, a medieval architecture expert and educator at the Met Cloisters. She said she was struck by delicacy of the structure, as well as that in the three stunning stained-glass rose windows, and the elegant exterior carvings.

“There are a lot of details that remind one of intricate lace,” she said, “even though it’s a building of cold hard stone.”

Aside from the structure, art experts were concerned about the fate of countless priceless artworks and artifacts inside, including relics like the crown of thorns, which is only occasionally displayed.

“This cathedral has a number of elements that are not just famous but religiously significant,” said Julio Bermudez, professor at the school of architecture and planning at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. “One of course is the crown of thorns … the faithful believe this is the crown that the Savior put on his head. It’s kept in a very safe place. But you know the fire is tremendously damaging.” He also expressed concern about the beautiful stained-glass windows, which he called “really irreplaceable.”

Those worried about the cathedral’s durability could, perhaps, take solace in one of Notre Dame’s more fascinating survival stories. In 1977, workers demolishing a wall in another part of Paris discovered 21 heads belonging to 13th-century statues from the cathedral. The kings of Judea, which were a prime example of Gothic art, had been taken from Notre Dame during the French Revolution and guillotined by antiroyalists who mistakenly thought they represented French kings.

The heads, which were thought to be lost, are now displayed in the capital’s Cluny Museum.

The mourning was not limited to the art world. Religious leaders, too, expressed deep sorrow over the devastation.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said he was praying for Notre Dame, which he called “second maybe to St. Peter’s Basilica, (in) … the ability of a church to lift our minds and hearts back to the Lord.”

“For the French, my God, for the world, Notre Dame Cathedral represents what’s most notable, what’s most uplifting, what’s most inspirational about the human project,” he said.

Boehm, at the Cloisters, found herself thinking about how the cathedral is at once of the past, and of the present — a living, vibrant building, despite its age.

“When you step inside it, you have at once the sense of everything that came before, and everything that’s still current,” she said.
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Tiger Woods’ victory at the Masters golf tournament on Sunday, his first major victory since 2008, is expected to lift sales for sponsors, broadcasters and golf courses lucky enough to host a tournament with Woods playing.

The competition put the 43-year-old back on top of a sport he helped transform 25 years ago.

“Tiger sells golf,” says Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group, a Michigan analytics firm. Apex found that Nike earned $22.5 million worth of brand exposure just from Woods’ final round, with Nike’s “Swoosh” logo splashed on his hat, shirt, pants and shoes. Nike stock was up about one percent on Monday.

Tournament broadcaster CBS Corp saw a ratings bump.

Based on preliminary data, the final round of Sunday’s tournament was the highest-rated morning golf broadcast since 1986, when CBS started collecting that data. The tournament, which is usually broadcast in the afternoon, was rescheduled to the morning because of weather.

CBS has the rights to the PGA Championship in May and expects prices for advertising time that is still available to rise as a result of Woods’ Masters victory, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The golf demographic is wealthier and better-educated than other sports fans, so TV ratings are valued more highly because  hey’re more apt to turn into sales, even of big-ticket items, said Neal Pilson, president of Pilson Communications and former president of CBS Sports.

“Historically, events where Tiger Woods is on leaderboards on Sunday generated 30 to 40 percent higher ratings in the United States for those tournaments,” Pilson said.

Makings of a comeback

Woods was a 20-year-old prodigy when he turned pro in 1996.

Less than a year later he was ranked No. 1 in the world. He struck lucrative endorsement deals — including a five-year, $40 million deal with Nike — and golf experienced a surge in popularity.

Then Woods’ personal life collapsed and with it, his brand.

In 2009, after the news of multiple infidelities, he lost endorsement deals with companies like AT&T and Accenture. Other sponsors, such as Procter & Gamble’s Gillette and Berkshire Hathaway’s NetJets, kept their contracts with Woods but stopped using him in marketing.

Four back surgeries later, Woods continued to suffer professionally and in the public eye. In 2017 police arrested him for driving under the influence; he pleaded guilty to reckless driving and entered a program for first-time offenders.

In 2018, Woods began a professional comeback that culminated at Sunday’s Masters. After his victory, Nike, which stood behind Woods throughout his darker years, posted an ad on its website titled “Tiger Woods: Same Dream.”

“In sports you have heroes, villains and underdogs,” said Benjamin Hordell, founder of digital marketing and advertising firm DXagency. “Tiger has lived all of it. That’s amazing from a storytelling perspective. People will root against him, but they’re watching.”

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would award Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Aretha Franklin is still getting R-E-S-P-E-C-T after death: The Queen of Soul received the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor Monday, becoming the first individual woman to earn a special citation prize since the honor was first awarded in 1930.

The Pulitzer board said the award was given to Franklin for “her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades.”

Franklin died on Aug. 16 at her home in Detroit from pancreatic cancer at age 76.

The superstar musician was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when she entered the prestigious organization in 1987.

The Pulitzer board most recently awarded a special citation prize in 2010 to Hank Williams, the country music legend who died in 1953. From the arts world, other recipients include Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, George Gershwin, Ray Bradbury, William Schuman, Milton Babbitt, Scott Joplin, Roger Sessions, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

Before Monday, only 41 special citation prizes had been awarded since 1930, and winners have ranged from individual people to organizations and groups, including the New York Times, writers E.B. White, Alex Haley and Kenneth Roberts, and Columbia University and its Graduate School of Journalism. Franklin and the Capital Gazette newspaper received special citation honors this year.

“Aretha is blessed and highly favored even in death. She’s continued to receive multiple awards — she’s received almost every award imaginable and now to get the Pulitzer Prize, it’s just amazing,” Sabrina Owens, Franklin’s niece and the executor of her estate, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “Aretha continues to bless us with her music and just paving the way for women going forward. It’s thrilling. She would be so happy right now.”

When Owens heard the news that Franklin won a Pulitzer, she and the family were “surprised but in another way we were not because that’s just the kind of person Aretha was.”

“She was just very gifted and talented, and the world is still recognizing that,” she said.

Franklin’s inclusion into the exclusive club re-confirms the impact her music — and voice — had and continues to have on the world. She became a cultural icon and genius of American song, considered by many to be the greatest popular vocalist of her time. Her voice transcended age, category and her own life.

Franklin was professional singer and accomplished pianist by her late teens and a superstar by her mid-20s. Raised in Detroit, she recorded hundreds of tracks and had dozens of hits over the span of a half century, including 20 that reached No. 1 on the R&B charts.

But her reputation was defined by an extraordinary run of Top 10 smashes in the late 1960s, from the morning-after bliss of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” to the wised-up “Chain of Fools” to her unstoppable call for “Respect,” transforming Otis Redding’s song into a classic worldwide anthem — especially for the feminist and civil rights movements — making it one of the most recognizable and heard songs of all-time.

She sold millions of albums and won countless awards, including 18 Grammys, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

She performed at the inaugurations of Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and even sang at the funeral for civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and at the dedication of Martin Luther King Jr’s memorial.

Rolling Stone ranked Franklin No.1 on its list of the Top 100 singers and she was also named one of the 20 most important entertainers of the 20th century by Time magazine, which celebrated her “mezzo-soprano, the gospel growls, the throaty howls, the girlish vocal tickles, the swoops, the dives, the blue-sky high notes, the blue-sea low notes. Female vocalists don’t get the credit as innovators that male instrumentalists do. They should. Franklin has mastered her instrument as surely as John Coltrane mastered his sax.”

Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, though her family moved to Buffalo, New York, and then settled in Detroit. She grew up singing in the church alongside her father Rev. C.L. Franklin, a prominent Baptist minister who recorded dozens of albums of sermons and music. She joined him on tour and she released a gospel album in 1956. Four years later, she signed with Columbia Records and when her contract ran out in 1966, she joined Atlantic Records.

That’s when she blazed the pop and R&B charts with a string of hits, including “Respect,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Think,” “Chain of Fools,” “Day Dreaming,” “(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone,” “Rock Steady” and “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do).”

Her Grammy-winning album, “Amazing Grace,” is one of the seminal albums in not only Franklin’s discography, but the canon of American pop music. It is the basis for the recently released concert film “Amazing Grace,” filmed over two sessions in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
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