Art Resources founder Bartman dead at 58

NEW YORK, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Art Resources Transfer founder and former screenwriter/director William S. Bartman has died in New York at age 58.

Bartman created Art Resources Transfer, a nonprofit organization that issues arts books and gives them to libraries and schools in needy communities across the nation.

He died of multiple organ failure in a New York hospital Sept. 15, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Bartman had long-term health problems, an Art Resources Transfer spokesman said.

Bartman founded his organization in Los Angeles in 1987 and moved it to New York in 1996. His group published 17 contemporary artist/interview books, which are sold in bookstores, museums and galleries. Its Distribution to Underserved Communities Program has donated more than 140,000 arts books and materials to schools and libraries, the Times said.

Bartman was active at Los Angeles' West Coast Theater Co. in the 1970s and 1980s and founded a theater program at the federal prison in Lompoc, Calif.

The Chicago native directed and co-wrote the 1982 movie "O'Hara's Wife," starring Ed Asner, Mariette Hartley and Jodie Foster.

He is survived by his mother, a brother and a sister, all of Los Angeles.