New England Journal of Aesthetic Research news headlines

“He just liked to take the pictures of me,” Eleanor Callahan told us during a visit to a show of her late husband Harry’s photos of her at RISD in 2008. She died of cancer in Atlanta today at 95. And the New York Times obituary quotes from our interview with her. “In every pose. Rain or shine. And whatever I was doing. If I was doing the dishes or if I was half asleep. And he knew that I never, never said no. I was always there for him. Because I knew that Harry would only do the right thing. I never had any fear. Harry could do whatever he wanted with me and my body.”

Police at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts “are looking for a woman who allegedly punched a student journalist in the face for her pro-gay marriage editorial.”

Susan Hockfield, who has been president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2004, announced that she plans to step down. She is the Cambridge school’s first woman president.

How to stave off public transit cuts threatened for Boston region? Blue Mass Group: “Stop wasting tax dollars on corporate welfare to Hollywood.” UniversalHub explains: “The amount of a tax break Tom Cruise gets when he makes a movie here almost equals the cost of keeping [Boston] commuter rail service running on weekends and after 10 p.m.”

“Tom’s a very good artist, and I look forward to seeing him come back into view. But it will take a body of work that will snap people’s heads around again,” Robert Storr says of Massachusetts artist Tom Friedman on the occasion of his show at Luhring Augustine in New York.

Wall Street Journal: “Videogames have long been assailed for their violent themes and gruesome imagery. But a small slice of players has embraced a new strategy: not killing. They are imparting real-world morals on their virtual-world characters and completing entire games on a ‘pacifist run’—the term for beating a blood-and-guts adventure without drawing any blood.” Also from On the Media.

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s video game “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” is “one of the finest action role-playing games yet made,” according to The New York Times. Does this mean that government help of business pays off?

“This is the way I played as a child, with my blocks and toys,” Hartford photographer Walter Wick, creator of the “Can You See What I See?” kids books, and co-creator with Jean Marzollo of the “I SPY” series, said of his exhibit at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut. “When I ran out of blocks, I used a kitchen stool, deli tubs.”

Major review of Boston’s Rachel Perry Welty in New York Times: “To those who don’t know much about recent art, her work may seem clever, inventive and poignant. If you’re familiar with contemporary currents, however, it feels more like a competent synthesis of recent trends and often conjures bolder works by other artists.” The show originated at DeCordova and is now in New Jersey.

LA’s Mike Kelley died Jan. 31 after “apparent suicide.”