Sarah Wilkerson Lansdell

Lansdell, Sarah Wilkerson,

art critic for The Courier-Journal from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, died on September 5, 2017, her 97th birthday.

A funeral service was held on September 9 at her home in Sandersville, Georgia, with burial in the family cemetery.

She was a graduate of Armstrong Junior College in Savannah where she discovered the theater and loved to tell about being directed in plays by Stacy Keach, Sr. At the University of Georgia she earned a Bachelor's Degree in journalism. For a time she was court reporter for the Savannah Morning News where she met her husband Joe Lansdell. In the early 1940s she helped write and edit the Sandersville Progress. Mrs. Lansdell was the women's editor of the Macon (Ga.) News from 1951 to 1954 when she was hired by the Courier-Journal in Louisville where she worked in the Women's Department for a few years. She became that newspaper's art critic in the Sunday Department, a position she held for about 20 years.

Some highlights of her career were an interview with Andy Warhol at Churchill Downs in 1982, attendance at the Arts Gala at the Carter White House, and a trip to Russia with other arts professionals in 1983. Some Kentucky artists and gallery owners with whom she developed long friendships were James Blackburn, Henry Faulkner, Joe Downing, and Fred Merida. Madeline and Thor Laugesen of the old Thor Gallery and Speed Museum director Franklin Page were also longtime friends.

Mrs. Lansdell enjoyed acting with the Louisville Little Theatre and the Carriage House Players under longtime director C. Douglas Ramey, and was an active member of the First Unitarian Church of Louisville.

After retiring Mrs. Lansdell moved back to her home place Forest Grove in Sandersville where she enjoyed breeding and showing Toy Manchester Terriers. She is survived by her daughter, Lyle Wilkerson Lansdell of Sandersville, her grandson, Emil Amos Snizek of Brooklyn, N.Y., and cousins.