A Graceful Exit

On April 17, 2007, the nation lost a grande dame of the arts and culture: Kitty Carlisle Hart, chair of the New York State Council on the Arts from 1976 to 1996, a woman who had an extraordinarily long and varied career in show business. Born with the name Catherine Conn (pronounced Cohen) to a Jewish family living in New Orleans, La., in 1910, Kitty was 96 years old when she died in New York City.