Art Rosenbaum, a painter and folk musician acclaimed for a half-century of field recordings of American vernacular music, including old-time Appalachian fiddle tunes and ritual music imported from Africa by enslaved people, died on Sept. 4 at a hospital in Athens, GA. He was 83.

His passion was to document a broad range of American musical traditions passed down and performed at work camps, church gatherings and rural living rooms. An important inspiration was Pete Seeger, who once told Mr. Rosenbaum, “Don’t learn from me; learn from the folks I learned from.”

As a painter, he was inspired by Cezanne and Max Beckmann, the German Expressionist.

Melvin Sokolsky, a photographer who pushed boundaries by creating fantastical tableaus that seemed to defy gravity and logic, died on August 29, at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 88.

His career in fashion photography imbued cool couture style with high-art surrealism. Later, he moved on to directing and shooting television commercials, collecting more than 25 Clio Awards. Many of his images were later shown in galleries and museums, including the Louvre in Paris, the MOMA in New York, and the Getty in Los Angeles.

Edward A. Feiner, who as the chief architect of the U.S. government revolutionized the public image of countless federal agencies by hiring renowned architects to design hundreds of courthouses, government laboratories, border stations and office buildings, died on July 1 in Falls Church, VA. He was 75.

He brought great design to projects both high-profile and obscure. His list of collaborators amounted to a Who’s Who of modern American architecture, including Richard Meier, I.M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stern, and Kohn Pedersen Fox.

One might say that Mr. Feiner took bad civic design as a personal affront. He kept photos of what he considered architectural “horrors” pinned to his office wall. Of the Jacob Javits Federal Building, he said, “You look at that building and you say why? Why would you build a piece of schlock amid landmarks?”

Mr. Feiner’s emphasis on design consciousness over budget consciousness often put him at odds with fiscal hawks in Congress. “Bad design,” he said repeatedly, “could only diminish the public’s respect for government and what it could achieve; good design, on the other hand, was critical to creating a vibrant civic culture.”

Jan Langone, a diligent food scholar who started a mail-order cookbook business from her basement that grew into one of the nation’s great cookbook collections, died August 3 in Ann Arbor, MI. She was 89.

In her lifetime, she collected food-related books and ephemera, including the nation’s first cookbook, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons and published in 1796. She also secured a 1971 text believed to be the nation’s first Jewish cookbook.

Ms. Longone’s collection, nearly 25,000 items strong, became the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan and the antecedent for dozens of other culinary libraries. Ruth Reichl, who presided over Gourmet from 1999 to 2009, said Ms. Longone was one of the first to understand the power of history told through the lens of cooks. “She knew the value of looking at cookbooks unmitigated by a historian’s perspective,” Ruth Reichl said.

Despite her generosity with cooking information, Ms. Longone was tight-lipped about her sources. But she always gave would-be collectors the same advice: “When you see something you want, buy it. I’ve been guilty of this mistake myself. I never regret the things I’ve bought, but I do regret some things I didn’t buy.”

Henrique Morelenbaum, considered one of Brazil’s most prominent conductors and music directors, died July 29 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 90.

“He was one of the most important personalities in Brazilian musical life over the last 70 years, as an instrumentalist, conductor, teacher and administrator. He left his mark on the institutions where he worked,” read a tribute posted by the Brazilian Academy of Music, of which Morelenbaum was an active member.

Over the course of his career, Morelenbaum conducted symphonic concerts, operas and ballets. As part of his international contemporary repertoire, he was responsible for the Brazilian premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Kol Nidre,” an orchestral piece named after the Yom Kippur payer. He was widely recognized for promoting Brazilian composers abroad.

Eli Evans, a prolific writer about southern Jews and an influential grant-maker, died July 26 in New York City, two days shy of his 86th birthday.

In The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, the first of several books Evans wrote on the subject, he detailed growing up a Jew in Durham and the antisemitism directed at his family.

After working briefly in politics, as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson and an aide to North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford, Evans joined the Carnegie Corporation. There and later at the Charles H. Revson Foundation, he advanced a philosophy of activist grant-making focused on allowing talented people to carry out their own visions. His projects helped Marian Wright Edelman launch the Children’s Defense Fund, seeded the South with Black lawyers who became local civil rights leaders, and built ties between Israeli and Egyptian scientists after their countries made peace in 1979.

“Private philanthropy has the freedom, privilege and responsibility to do what government cannot,” Evans wrote in 1998. “It can use its independence to take the long view, to forewarn, to support the unpopular, the visionary, the dreamers and their dreams. It can test new ideas, try new approaches, and bring together people of widely differing perspectives, disciplines, and talents to discover new avenues of mutual understanding.”

[Eli was a close relative by marriage of Marshall’s family,” Ann Hurwitz told The Shofar. “Eli was a lovely man with a wonderful sense of humor. Once many years ago, Marshall, our son James, Eli and I went to Williamsburg together to celebrate Simchat Torah with Rabbi Schneerson. It was a memorable occasion.”]

Burt Metcalfe, executive producer of the hit comedy-drama series “M*A*S*H*” for the last six of its 11 seasons, and who helped write the two-and-a-half-hour final episode, died on July 27 in Los Angeles. He was 87.

Mr. Metcalf had been an actor and casting director before becoming a producer of “M*A*S*H*” about the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, a show widely

regarded as one of the best series in television history. He joined for its first season in 1972 at the request of Gene Reynolds, a friend and an architect of the show along with the writer Larry Gelbart. When Mr. Reynolds left after the fifth season, Mr. Metcalfe succeeded him as the executive producer.

Mr. Metcalfe was nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including four for directing. He later became an executive at Warner Bros. and MTM Enterprises. He retired in the 1990s.