Philip Pavia, 94; N.Y. Sculptor Known for...

Philip Pavia, 94; N.Y. Sculptor Known for Large-Scale Works

Philip Pavia, 94, an avant-garde sculptor best known for a large bronze assemblage called “The Ides of March,” which was displayed in prominent public spaces in New York City for more than three decades, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at New York University Medical Center.

A Bridgeport, Conn., native, Pavia was the son of a stonecutter and attended Yale before dropping out to study at the Art Students League of New York.

In the 1940s, he helped found the Club, a group of artists, writers and intellectuals in New York, and organized most of its panel discussions.

In the 1950s, he founded It Is magazine, which embodied the same spirit of intellectual debate as the Club.

His style varied from figurative to abstract and tended toward large-scale works. “The Ides of March,” a four-piece sculpture, stood for years outside the New York Hilton and later the Hippodrome building.

Despite a recent mishap that resulted in three of the four pieces winding up with a scrap metal dealer, the work was preserved and will be permanently displayed at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

Paul K. Perry, 95; Political Statistician Was President of Gallup Poll

Paul K. Perry, 95, who greatly improved the reliability of political polls after the 1948 election in which top pollsters wrongly predicted the defeat of President Harry S. Truman, died of a cerebral hemorrhage April 7 at a hospital in Princeton, N.J.

Perry also helped build the Gallup Poll as its chief statistician. He succeeded George Gallup as president in 1958, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1979.

Born in Camden, N.J., he graduated from Tufts College in Massachusetts before joining the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935.

In 1942, he moved to Audience Research, which conducted research for the movie industry.

Perry made two of his most important contributions to polling after returning to the American Institute of Public Opinion in the wake of pollsters’ embarrassing performance in the 1948 presidential election.

He devised more reliable methods for counting likely voters and for allocating the undecided vote.

Passings

Kay Gardella, a television critic for the New York Daily News for nearly 60 years, died of cancer Wednesday in New York. She was 82.