Patti Smith Returns to Singing Live with Brooklyn Concert

Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
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Patti Smith Returns to Singing Live with Brooklyn Concert

Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)
Patti Smith attends a special screening of "Pavarotti" at the iPic Theater in New York on May 28, 2019. (AP)

Patti Smith performed a mini-concert at the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday to honor photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and add her voice to a series of pop-up events that represent New York City’s first baby steps toward the return of live indoor performances.

Smith performed six songs as well as read poetry and excerpts from her book “Just Kids” in the Beaux-Arts Court at the museum, her voice bouncing off the skylight 60 feet above. It was a concert to also honor museum workers and drew just under 50 people, all socially distanced in widely spaced chairs.

“I’m not nervous, but it’s been so long,” she told the crowd. An hour later, just before donning her mask and walking off after a standing ovation, she added: “Hope to see you soon.”

Dressed in black from her boots to her shirt with her gray hair flowing, Smith and an accompanist, Tony Shanahan, performed “Wing,” “My Blakean Year,” “Grateful” and “Dancing Barefoot,” as well as Tim Hardin’s “How Can We Hang On to a Dream?” and Neil Young’s “Helpless.” She ended the set with her biggest hit, “Because the Night,” written with Bruce Springsteen.

It was one of many city-wide cultural events that are part of NY PopsUp, a new festival running until Labor Day that is overseen by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal.

The programming is led by interdisciplinary artist and director Zack Winokur, who said he wants events that are “intimate, provocative, gorgeous, stop us in our tracks and remind us what it is to connect with other people through live performance.”

Winokur noted that NY PopsUp is curated by a council of artists, including jazz musician Jon Batiste, set designer Mimi Lien and playwright Jeremy O. Harris. It hopes to get the arts — a giant motor of the city’s economy and culture — moving again.

“We have to take baby steps in order to make sure that it’s incredibly safe,” he said. “Those constraints afford a kind of intimacy and opportunity that is really getting us back to the basics of what it is to connect with people and to connect with art again.”

The shows are being held in performance spaces — including The Apollo in Harlem, St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn and Broadway’s Music Box theater — that are able to be adapted for social distancing guidelines.

Other artists expected to participate include Hugh Jackman, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Amy Schumer, Many Patinkin, Q-Tip, Sutton Foster, Billy Porter, Idina Menzel, Renée Fleming, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.

The Smith concert came on the same day in 1989 that Mapplethorpe died at age 42. It also marked the one-year anniversary of when Smith last performed live, at The Fillmore in San Francisco. She weaved stories about Mapplethorpe and her husband, Fred Smith, with her daughter, Jesse, in attendance. She spoke of the day in 1976 in Detroit that she first locked eyes with her future husband.

Smith, known as the Godmother of Punk, came out of New York in the early 1970s to create a blend of cerebral, raggedly emotional music. On Monday, she read from a selection from “Just Kids” about her life with Mapplethorpe in the borough of Brooklyn, describing a couple with not much money but a killer record collection.



Gene Hackman Died at Home a Week after Wife Died from Hantavirus, Authorities Say

An image of late US actor Gene Hackman is seen on a screen during an "in memoriam" segment at the 97th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, California on March 2, 2025. (AFP)
An image of late US actor Gene Hackman is seen on a screen during an "in memoriam" segment at the 97th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, California on March 2, 2025. (AFP)
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Gene Hackman Died at Home a Week after Wife Died from Hantavirus, Authorities Say

An image of late US actor Gene Hackman is seen on a screen during an "in memoriam" segment at the 97th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, California on March 2, 2025. (AFP)
An image of late US actor Gene Hackman is seen on a screen during an "in memoriam" segment at the 97th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, California on March 2, 2025. (AFP)

Forensic experts came to a heartrending conclusion Friday about the manner of death for actor Gene Hackman: he died of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer's disease on an empty stomach a week after a rare, rodent-borne disease took the life of his wife at their home in Santa Fe.

The partially mummified remains of Hackman, 95, and Betsy Arakawa, 65, were discovered Feb. 26 when maintenance and security workers showed up at the home and alerted police.

Authorities unraveled the mysterious circumstances and revealed that Arakawa likely died Feb. 11 at home from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal disease spread by infected rodent droppings.

Hackman, in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, apparently was unaware that his wife was dead.

"He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that’s what resulted in his death," chief medical investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell said. "It’s quite possible he was not aware she was deceased."

Both deaths were ruled to be from natural causes.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Arakawa’s last known outing was a round of errands and shopping Feb. 11. She visited a pharmacy, pet store and grocery before returning to the couple's gated neighborhood that evening.

Arakawa stopped answering emails that day. The couple’s cellphone communications have not yet been analyzed.

Hackman’s pacemaker last showed signs of activity a week later, indicating an abnormal heart rhythm Feb. 18, the day he likely died, Jarrell said.

Hackman was found in the home's entryway, and Arakawa was found in a bathroom. Their bodies were decomposing with some mummification, a consequence of body type and climate in Santa Fe’s especially dry air at an elevation of nearly 7,200 feet (2,200 meters).

The revelations about the manner of the couple’s deaths jolted Santa Fe, the state capital city known as a refuge for celebrities, artists and authors.

"All of us that knew him should have been checking on him," said Stuart Ashman, co-owner of Artes de Cuba gallery, who cherished his encounters with Hackman at a local Pilates exercise studio. "I had no idea. ... It’s just really sad. And that she died a week before him. My God."

Experts believe Hackman was severely impaired due to Alzheimer’s disease and unable to deal with his wife’s death in the last week of his life — or seek help after she died.

"Their (the authorities’) explanation, I thought, was quite clear and plausible, said Dr. Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist in Virginia. "I believe they really discovered what truly happened in this case."

Most older Americans with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias live at home, and many receive care from family or friends.

Hantavirus typically is reported in spring and summer, often due to exposures that occur when people are near mouse droppings in homes, sheds or poorly ventilated areas. This is the first confirmed case of hantavirus in New Mexico this year.

While hantavirus is found throughout the world, most cases in the US have been found in western states. The virus can cause a severe and sometimes deadly lung infection.

Jarrell said it was not known how quickly Arakawa died.

One of the couple’s three dogs, a kelpie mix named Zinna, also was found dead in a crate in a bathroom closet near Arakawa, while two other dogs survived.

Dogs do not get sick from hantavirus, said Erin Phipps, a veterinarian with the New Mexico Health Department. A necropsy will be done on the dog.

The sheriff considers this an open investigation until they receive results of the dog’s necropsy and finish checking into data from personal cellphones retrieved from the home.

Hackman, a Hollywood icon, won two Oscars during a storied career in films including "The French Connection,Hoosiers" and "Superman" from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.

Arakawa, born in Hawaii, studied as a concert pianist, attended the University of Southern California and met Hackman in the mid-1980s while working at a California gym.

Hackman dedicated much of his time in retirement to painting and writing novels far from Hollywood’s social circuit. He served for several years on the board of trustees at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and he and Arakawa were investors in local businesses.