Anniversaries in 2005

Last year, I blogged a lot about various anniversary-year events being observed in France: Salvador Dalí and George Sand were the big ones. In a post on what President Jacques Chirac said in tribute to Sand at her birthday ceremony in July, I signalled some of the American greats I hope our President will be saluting in the years to come. In that spirit, here are some anniversaries that President Bush should consider marking this year:

• Art:
  • Painter Gilbert Stuart (born December 3, 1755), Presidential portraitist par excellence
    
  • Sculptor Hiram Powers (born June 29, 1805), most famous for The Greek Slave (now owned by the Corcoran Museum of Art here in Washington)
    
  • Sculptor and writer Horatio Greenough (born September 6, 1805), whose sculpture of George Washington as Zeus is outrageously fun
    
  • Abstract painter Barnett Newman (born January 29, 1905), the zipmeister
• Music:
  • Composer Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck, February 15, 1905), who penned "Over the Rainbow," "Stormy Weather," "One for the Road," and countless other pieces of Americana (there are people already preparing to celebrate the Harold Arlen Centennial)
    
  • Composer Marc Blitzstein (born March 2, 1905), who adapted Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera in English and composed The Cradle Will Rock, Regina, and other stage works
    
  • Premiere of George F. Bristow's Rip Van Winkle (September 27, 1855), the first American opera on an American subject (could we get a performance and recording of it somewhere? anybody?)
• Literature:
  • Robert Penn Warren (born April 24, 1905), former poet laureate and author of All the King's Men
    
  • Critic and author Lionel Trilling (born July 4, 1905)

Other anniversaries that I hope are observed around the world:

• Renowned castrato Farinelli (born Carlo Broschi January 24, 1705)
  
• Fanny Mendelssohn (born November 14, 1805)
  
• Alexis de Toqueville (born July 29, 1805)
  
• German poet Friedrich Schiller (died May 9, 1805), who wrote, among other things, the poem An die Freude, set to music memorably by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony
  
• Gérard de Nerval, the French poet and writer (who committed suicide on January 26, 1855)
  
• Legendary Austrian musicologist Guido Adler (born November 1, 1855)
  
• Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (died November 11, 1855): see this commentary on his works
  
• Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (died November 26, 1855)

If you know of someone I have left off the list, that's what the comments are for.