Adriano Goldschmied, the Italian businessman known as “the godfather of denim” for his role in developing versions of the world’s most popular fabric, died on April 5 in Castelfranco Veneto, a town near his home in Asolo, Italy. He was 82.

            On any given day, marketers say, nearly half the world’s population is wearing jeans. Last year, more than $98 billion worth of jeans were sold worldwide, and if you wear jeans, you own a pair that is influenced in some way by Mr. Goldschmied’s presence in the industry.

            By his count, Mr. Goldschmied collaborated on or started more than 50 brands, including Gap 1969, a retro label named for the year Gap was founded, as well as Goldsign and AG Adriano Goldschmied, now known as AG Jeans.

Iris Cantor, an arts patron and philanthropist who with her investment banker husband, B. Gerald Cantor, the founder of Cantor Fitzgerald, amassed — and then bestowed to various museums — one of the largest private collections of Rodin sculptures in the world, died on Feb. 22 at her home in Palm Beach FL. She was 95.

The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation’s major beneficiaries include the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Stanford University, the Musée Rodin in Paris, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. She also funded health centers in major hospitals across the country.

In an interview with the Metropolitan Museum in 2022, Mrs. Cantor said, “Art should contribute in a meaningful way to the life of a community and to our collective understanding of who we are, where we came from, and even where we might be headed. There is still no better place for all of this to happen than at museums, which preserve and showcase the results of human creativity.”

Isaiah Zagar, an outsider artist who bedazzled thousands of square feet of Philadelphia with mosaic murals, pieced together from shards of mirrors and crockery and encrusted with bottles and bicycle wheels, died on Feb. 19 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 86.

From the late 1960s, Mr. Zagar produced more than 50,000 square feet of mosaic murals in Philadelphia and dozens of murals in other states and in Latin America. Some of his work is held in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Sondra Lee, an actress, dancer and singer who brought an impish glee to supporting roles in the original Broadway musical productions of “Peter Pan” and “Hello, Dolly!,” died on March 2 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.

In June, Ms. Lee attended a performance of songs from “Hello, Dolly!” by the Water Company at Carnegie Hall. During the show, she came onstage to be recognized as the last surviving principal from the show’s original cast. The audience stood and roared.

Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s 1968 Democratic presidential campaign and author of the Oscar-winning screenplay, “The Candidate,” died on Feb. 24 in Oakland, CA. He was 88.

In 2012, Time magazine named “The Candidate” one of the 15 best political films of all time, calling it an “unsentimental, mordantly funny dissection of bigtime politics.” When Mr. Larner accepted the Oscar for best original screenplay, he thanked “the political figures of our time who’ve given me terrific inspiration,” drawing laughter from the audience.

Carol Kitman, a New York photographer whose chance encounter with twin immigrant brothers in Brooklyn led typo a decades-long project documenting their lives, tracking them through bar mitzvahs, weddings, military careers and, during the first Trump administration, the political scandal that made Alexander and Eugene Vindman household names, died on March 3 in the Bronx. She was 96.

“Her initial interest was about two cute little boys,” Alexander Vindman said. “But after those first photographs, she became part of our lives.”

Both Vindmans, lieutenant colonels in the U.S. Army, worked for the National Security Council during the first Trump administration. In 2020, they testified in separate hearings about President Trump’s pressure on Ukraine’s president to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Trump administration removed both brothers from the National Security Council staff, and both retired from the military in 2020.

Mrs. Kitman’s pictures appeared frequently in newspapers, including The New York Times, and she exhibited her work in galleries and community colleges.

Times of Israel photo/Carol Kitman