Talk:Sam Gilliam

message: --19h00s (talk) 06:21, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I have boldly copied this content to a todo banner as topics are eventually archived. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 16:33, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

text: For anyone interested in helping edit/trim/re-style things, I think I'm basically done adding the bulk of newly sourced information and analysis. Still a few odds and ends that I think might be important, but can definitely start trying to edit it down now. 19h00s (talk) 07:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: To-do list & future projects (created Feb 2024)

message: Expanding on my Edit summary, it would be helpful to have additional eyes on the section regarding Gilliam's mental health and arrest in 1975 for assaulting a fellow plane passenger - I want to be sure I'm keeping NPOV and citing the court memorandum correctly. There are few details readily available  about the incident apart from a U.S. Tax Court memorandum decision from 10 years later related to Gilliam's legal fees, which has become notable case law due to the circumstances and the precedents it set. But that memorandum decision is structured in a way that makes it difficult to really parse (no details as to who said what, etc.) As far as I can find, the arrest was covered by The Washington Post and Washington Star (both cited via NewsBank) and United Press International (not accessible in any databases online but the Star article has no listed author and cites UPI's reporting, so it was presumably a rewrite of a UPI wire article). Gilliam was essentially an art world star when this happened, so I'm pretty surprised I haven't been able to find more. He never spoke publicly about it from what I can find, but I haven't been able to visit his papers at the Archives of American Art, so there's a chance it's mentioned somewhere in there. Significantly, none of the literature about Gilliam's art career makes any mention of the plane incident (checked all the published monographs after 1990 and all the in-depth monographic journal pieces) - it's unsurprising that it wasn't mentioned in his retrospective monograph, but even the academic art journal articles and well-researched historically oriented contemporary magazine/news profiles of Gilliam omit the incident, and none of the literature mentions his mental health whatsoever. The only place this is regularly discussed is legal journals in the context of tax law, most of which are just citing the case as a precedent.
I found this because I checked the original few edits on this article, at some point in early Wiki era the tax court memo was pasted in its entirety - it seems that a tax law professor realized who Gilliam was around the time of the retrospective in 2005 and made a blog post about him that got some attention in law circles. The really distasteful phrasing in that blog - he "went berserk" - speaks to the issue of trusting the tone/reporting on this, a nuanced situation that has few detailed first-person sources (but I also like Gilliam's art, so I want to be mindful not to let my appreciation translate into just giving him the benefit of the doubt in the way it's phrased/framed here).
I'll be adding more to the article re: his career/style in the 80s-2020s via the literature, but wanted to flag this now that I've added it and structured the relevant citations so others can help reword it/add more info/whittle it down/help translate the court memorandum speak. (tagging @Sj in case you have any insights into a good approach here) --19h00s (talk) 06:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello 19h00s, the updates are looking good. This seems like an incident that made the news but was not considered significant in his life's work, worth mention (e.g. as sources for his depression and persistent psychiatric care), but not necessarily a long paragraph here. Bios don't need to mention every verifiable health event or interaction with the law. I can try to take a pass over the weekend. – SJ + 06:44, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:   In reviewing the decade I trimmed it to the widely covered elements, leaving the rest to the sources, to keep the flow of that section. Primary sources like court docs aren't great sources for notability, just for confirmation of details. I'm not surprised this didn't get more coverage given the context, and it may not speak much to overall mental health given it was a drug interaction. If you end up slimming the entire article down further once it's done, I'd say this is the least notable part of the section and something of an aside - it is certainly unusual but didn't impact his life or career, and even regionally made the news less than other evaluations of his work. – SJ + 03:21, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: circling back to add: found more details re: his health in the Post from 2016, I skimmed it early in my research and missed these. Seems to be the only place that details his health diagnoses, and it was from the Post's era of terrible SEO practices, and I was originally looking for details re the incident instead of details re his health. He was diagnosed bipolar in the 60s and placed on lithium, additional details in the article. I think his health may deserve a subsection at this point given the number of ways it impacted him, but I'm not super familiar with how to break out those sorts of sections/if it would be appropriate. Will let the group help decide how to structure that long-term. 19h00s (talk) 04:05, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Airline arrest