WASHINGTON, D.C.—Aldus Higgins Chapin, 78, died of heart and respiratory failure on May 15, the Washington Post reports. Chapin was a former associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a case officer for the CIA. He became executive director of Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery in 1968, a time of transition for the museum and its accompanying school. Chapin worked to broaden the museum’s constituency and ease the tension between the Corcoran School of Art’s administration and students and faculty. He helped found the United Arts Organization of Greater Washington in 1972 and also served as president of the Washington Performing Arts Society and president of the board of the Washington Ballet.

NEW YORK—Artist Philip Stein died at his home in Manhattan on April 27 at the age of 90, the New York Times reports. A former assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros, the famous Mexican muralist, Stein was known for his own murals containing large-scale figures and bright colors. As a young adult he worked a variety of jobs, including being a steel plant worker, an army weather forecaster, and a set designer at Columbia Pictures. In 1947 he went to study art at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, where Siqueiros had just been invited to serve as an artist in residence. Over the next decade the two worked together on nearly a dozen murals throughout Mexico City. In 1958 Stein returned to the United States and exhibited his Mexican-influenced artwork. In 1968 he completed his most famous piece, an untitled mural on the curved back wall of the jazz club the Village Vanguard in New York's Greenwich Village (the work has been referred to as New Man, New Woman). Painted on canvas, it depicts a man and woman in front of a multicolored background of vibrant geometric shapes.