Cultural critic, feminist theorist, memoirist and A.i.A. contributor Jill Johnston died on Nov. 18 at age 81. The feature "Tehching Hsieh: Art's Willing Captive" [September 2001, pp. 140–143] is one of many essays she wrote on a wide range of avant-garde topics for A.i.A.. An obituary of Jill Johnson by A.i.A. Editor-at-Large Elizabeth C. Baker will appear in the November issue of the magazine.

The best art being made today is by people who are bucking the system. David Wojnarowicz is one of them. As a highly visible AIDS activist he was briefly notorious in 1989 for having been scapegoat by the NEA in the Artists Space skirmish (as a writer in the catalogue, he had the nerve to name names in a text entitled "Post Cards from America: X-Rays from Hell"). In June1990 he brought suit against Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. More important, as an artist he has cut through the sentiment and guilt surrounding the AIDS crisis and made art directly about homosexuality. In his determination to make the private public, he has also gone beyond specific thematic material to forge a unique combination of politics and spirituality, of the known and unknown.

For 40 years Louise Bourgeois has resisted assimilation. Indeed, she is the last major figure of her generation whose "art world" reputation and influence on younger artists involve no significant debt to official approval or to wide public recognition and acceptance. Rather, the respect she commands is directly attributable to the active part she has continued to take in the ongoing struggles of contemporary art, and most importantly to the imposing and virtually unmediated presence of the work itself.

The artist Bill Viola brings his knowledge of digital technology and Buddhism to this appreciation of the work of Peter Campus.

May the ghost of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney forgive me, but I really miss Caligula. That is, I wish that the thoughtful but tepid current edition of that impossible curatorial predicament known as the Whitney Biennial contained at least one pulse-quickening phenomenon like Francesco Vezzoli’s faux-porn Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s ‘Caligula’ in the 2006 show. (I dismissed it back then as merely filling “the arty cineplex slot.” Ah, but what’s life without regret?)