Eli Cohen

Last week, the world lost a critic and a brave women nicknamed “The Iron Lady” who was the prime minister of the United Kingdom for years. They may be polar opposites, but one thing that they have in common is that they both inspired countless people for generations to come. Roger Ebert passed away April 4th and Margaret Thatcher passed four days later. They were  70 and 87, respectively.
Roger Ebert was born June 18th, 1942 in Urbana, Illinois. He began his career in 1967 as a film critic. He got his big break when Reader’s Digest published a review he wrote about, “Night of the Living Dead.” Ebert worked over the years as a critic who many looked towards for advice on which films were worth spending their dollar on. From 1967 to 2012, Ebert would choose a movie he saw during each year that he thought were truly amazing . Films on this list include “The Godfather”, “The Color Purple”, “Schindler’s list”, “Almost Famous”, and more recently, “The Social Network” were honorable inductees. Speaking of inductees, in 2009 Roger was honorary life member of the “Directors Guild of America.” In the last few years of his life, Roger was suffering from cancer of the thyroid and salvitory glands, until his death.
Margaret Thatcher was born October 13th, 1925 in Grantham England. Margaret was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was the first, and to this day the only female prime minister the country has ever had. She was also the leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She died at the Ritz Hotel due to a stroke. She had been suffering from poor health for many years. A funeral will be held for her on the 17th.
Both these inspirational people will be missed, but what they’ve done will never be forgotten. The man with the most honest opinion, and the woman who wore a queen’s robe of steel will never be replaced. R.I.P Roger and Margaret…Return If Possible.

Laura Li

One of the Pablo Picasso paintings donated from the Lauder collection

On April 9th, Philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder, heir to Estee Lauder’s massive cosmetics fortune, has gifted his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculpture to New York‘s Metropolitan Museum of Art. This collection is considered as the most significant contribution in the museum’s history.
Forbes values the collection at $1.1 billion, according to Forbes, the Cubist collection accounts for about 13.5% of Lauder’s total net worth — and drops his fortune to $7 billion. Prior to Lauder’s gift, only 23 individuals in the world had donated more than $1 billion over the course of their lifetimes (this list includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Eli Broad, George Kaiser, Michael Bloomberg, and George Lucas).
According to The New York Times, Scholars say the collection is among the world’s greatest, as good as, if not better than, the renowned Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures in institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Together they tell the story of a movement that revolutionized Modern art and fill a glaring gap in the Met’s collection, which has been notably weak in early-20th-century art.
The gift of 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Grises and 14 Légers is will be given permanently and without condition to the Met. And according to the Met’s Director, Thomas P. Campbell the collection “In one fell swoop puts the Met at the forefront of early-20th-century art…It is an unreproducible collection, something museum directors only dream about.”