WUSTL Visual & Performing Arts News

Outstanding Graduate Tingting Wu: Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts-Architecture

Liam Otten — 2012-05-16 00:00:00

David Kilper

Wu, a native of Shanghai, China, has a strong interest in blending the natural landscape with the cultural landscape.

Chouteau’s Landing is one of St. Louis’ oldest neighborhoods, located on the Mississippi Riverfront, just south of the Gateway Arch. Before the Civil War, it was a busy commercial and residential hub. Today, it is largely blighted, cut off from downtown by a spaghetti tangle of bridges and interstates.

Yet the area retains certain advantages, says Tingting Wu, who will graduate May 18 with a master’s degree in architecture from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

In addition to river access — a surprisingly rare commodity in this famous “river city” — Chouteau’s Landing boasts a wealth of historic structures and a massive retaining wall bedecked with a decade’s worth of legally sanctioned graffiti art. More fundamentally, these depopulated streets, fronting the temperamental Mississippi, represent the intersection of two powerful forces: what Wu calls “natural wilderness” and “cultural wildness.”

“I was struck by the vines growing from the small cracks of the giant graffiti wall,” Wu says.

The image captured the way nature reasserts itself despite decades — and even centuries — of human intervention.

Yet Wu remained conflicted. “Is this something we’ve achieved, or is it something we lost?”

This spring, Wu sought to reconcile such questions with her thesis project, a large-scale redevelopment plan. Titled “Entropic Infrastructure,” it follows a series of recent civic efforts, notably the Confluence Greenway, a system of riverfront parks and recreation areas; and CityArchRiver 2015, which aims to improve connections between the Mississippi, the Arch grounds and downtown.

But Wu’s proposal is notable for its conceptual elegance and for amplifying, rather than bulldozing, ground conditions. For example, in a nod to the graffiti wall, she designed a series of triangular, folded concrete pavilions to house cafes, restaurants and other amenities. Exteriors would be draped in vegetation; interiors would be available to graffiti artists.

“The graffiti comes this way, and the natural landscape comes that way,” she says, interlacing her fingers for emphasis. “When they come together, it becomes the building and the project.

“From the Arch grounds, one sees the flow of cultural wildness,” she adds. Facing toward the Arch, “one sees the transition of natural wilderness to manicured landscape.”

Art and landscape: For Wu, it’s a fitting intersection, both thematically and personally.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Wu credits her father, Zhiren Wu, an accomplished amateur craftsman and student of Chinese literature, with instilling a love for the arts.

She drew and painted from an early age, developing a particular facility for landscapes.

As an undergraduate at Shanghai’s Fudan University, Wu studied biomedical engineering but missed the challenge and creativity of hands-on design. After graduation, she interned for a pair of Chinese architectural firms and then enrolled in the Sam Fox School’s Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

“Architecture is unique because it can change how people think and live,” she says, but adds that the aesthetics of an individual structure are less important than its relationship with its surroundings.

“I don’t think architecture is an isolated practice. It is always connected to landscape or environment.”

“I have continuously admired Tingting’s work since she entered the program,” says Kathryn Dean, the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture and director of the graduate school.

“Tingting has an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtle nuances of both people and places. More importantly, she uses her gifted eye to reveal a new way of seeing the world.”

Following Commencement, Wu will move to New York City, though she hopes eventually to return to China.

“Architecture in China is very different from here,” Wu says.

In the Shanghai of her youth, “you saw buildings going up everywhere, every day, at a very quick pace,” she says.

All too often, that pace threatened to overwhelm local traditions and craftsmanship — just as blithe urban renewal once crippled neighborhoods like Chouteau’s Landing.

“China has a very long history and culture,” Wu says. “I think that architecture can work in a more thoughtful and responsible way.

“I want Chinese architecture to think about the future.”

Wind in their sails

2012-05-15 00:00:00

More than a dozen architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts tested a series of experimental handmade kites along the windy slopes of Art Hill in Forest Park April 26. The kites were designed and built as part of an undergraduate studio on architectural representation led by Sung Ho Kim, associate professor of architecture. All photos by Kevin Lowder/WUSTL Photo Services..

Fashion Show 2012: A night of glitz and glamour

2012-05-14 00:00:00

Mary butkus

It was a night of glitz and glamour for an audience of more than 200 in Plaza Frontenac April 29 for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 83rd annual Fashion Design Show. Titled Leaving a Legacy, the show was coordinated by Jennifer Ingram, the W. H. Smith Visiting Assistant Professor of Fashion, and featured dozens of models wearing scores of outfits by the Fashion Design Program’s nine seniors and 10 juniors. A slideshow is at right, with all photos by Mary Butkus. For more fashions, visit the Sam Fox School Facebook page.

2012 MFA Thesis Exhibition opens at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum May 4

2012-04-30 00:00:00

Jieun Kim, St. Louis Dreamscape, 2012. Water-based pigment and Flashe paint on Korean paper mounted on wood panel, and vinyl. Courtesy of the artist.

Washington University in St. Louis' Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will present its annual MFA Thesis Exhibition in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum from Friday, May 4, through Monday, Aug. 6.

Curated by Meredith Malone, associate curator at the Kemper Art Museum, the exhibition will feature projects by 23 graduating master of fine arts candidates in the Sam Fox School’s Graduate School of Art.

Also opening May 4 will be Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis. Curated by Karen K. Butler, the museum’s assistant curator, the exhibition highlights the tenure of the distinguished Renaissance scholar Frederick Hartt, who served as curator from 1949-1960.

Both exhibitions are free and open to the public and open with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Kemper Art Museum.

In addition, Patricia Olynyk, the Florence and Frank Bush Professor in Art and director of the Graduate School of Art, will lead a free walkthrough of the MFA exhibition at 7 p.m. Friday, June 8.

Immediately following Olynyk's talk will be a musical performance by Scarlet Tanager (8:30 p.m.) and an outdoor screening of Art School Confidential (10 p.m.).

Exhibiting MFA artists are: Ifeoma Ugonnwa Anyaeji, JE Baker, Natalie Baldeon, E. Thurston Belmer, Lauren Cardenas, Megan Sue Collins, Adrian Cox, Maya Durham, Erin Imena Falker, Jieun Kim, Howard Krohn, Robert Long, Marie Bannerot McInerney, Nikki McMahan, Michael T. Meier, Katie Millitzer, Reid G. Norris, Kathleen Perniciaro, Emily Squires, Jamie Presson Wells, Whitney Lorene Wood, Andrew James Woodard and Kelly K. Wright.

The Kemper Art Museum is located on WUSTL’s Danforth Campus, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.

For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s at Kemper Art Museum May 4

2012-04-27 00:00:00

Marsden Hartley, The Iron Cross, 1915. Oil on canvas. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. University purchase, Bixby Fund, 1952. Hi-res image available upon request.

During World War II, as a young lieutenant and Renaissance scholar, Frederick Hartt was assigned a jeep and a driver and charged with locating, securing and repatriating hundreds of works of art. He later chronicled the experience in Florentine Art under Fire (1949), the first book of his long and storied career.

Less well known is Hartt’s engagement with American abstraction. As a professor and curator at Washington University in St. Louis from 1949-1960, Hartt helped build one of the nation’s finest university collections of 20th-century modernism.

This summer, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will highlight Hartt’s tenure with Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis.

Organized by Karen K. Butler, the museum’s assistant curator, Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction will feature 27 paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Lyonel Feininger, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and many others.

Also included will be a handful of Renaissance and Baroque works, reflecting Hartt’s own scholarly interests as well as his conception of the museum as a teaching institution.

Florentine Art under Fire

As a monuments and fine arts officer for the Allied Military Government in Florence, Hartt skirted landmines and a retreating enemy while searching for priceless artworks that had been removed from the museums and churches of central and northern Italy.

“Hartt contributed mightily to the protection and preservation of Italy’s incomparable patrimony, as well as helping to track down more than $500 million dollars worth of stolen art,” says William Wallace, PhD, the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, who first met Hartt as a college senior.

“To encounter Botticelli’s Birth of Venus stacked against the wall of a gloomy stone cellar, along with innumerable other masterpieces,” Wallace says, “was a life changing experience that launched a storied career.”

Art of the time

After the war, Hartt completed his doctorate and, in 1949, arrived at WUSTL, where he succeeded the distinguished art historian Horst W. Janson. Over the next decade, Hartt would publish books on Botticelli (1953) and Giulio Romano (1958) as well as an important article on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1950).

Hartt also was appointed curator of the university art collection. Founded in 1881, the collection had been assembled, historically, by collecting the art of the time. Janson, who’d served as curator from 1944-48, was the first to extend that mandate to modernism, purchasing 40 works by many of Europe’s leading artists. Hartt, building on Janson’s framework, expanded the focus to include American abstraction.

“For Hartt, who saw the devastating consequences of World War II firsthand, large-scale gestural abstraction was the aesthetic form that most captured the qualities of the postwar human condition,” Butler says. “Although he celebrated its American qualities — particularly its emotional intensity and scale — he saw its formal roots in European modernism.”

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction

Hartt’s acquisitions largely fall into two groups: works by early practitioners of abstraction, whom he called “the pioneers”; and works by the post-war generation of New York artists associated with abstract expressionism.

Representing the pioneers will be two seminal examples of early modernism: The Iron Cross (1915) by the American Marsden Hartley, and Brücke I (Bridge I) (1913) by the future émigré Lyonel Feininger. Both works were created in Germany, thus linking thematically to Janson’s focus on European cubism, constructivism and surrealism.

Also included will be Stuart Davis’s Max #2 (1949) and Arthur Dove’s Sand and Sea (1943), which combine modernist form and subject matter with distinctly American iconography.

The abstract expressionists are represented by a series of major works, which Hartt acquired at the rate of approximately one per year. These include Willem de Kooning’s Saturday Night (1956) and Philip Guston’s Fable I (1956–57), each purchased shortly after completion.

Also on view will be Arshile Gorky’s large-scale Golden Brown Painting (1943–44) and one of Jackson Pollock’s final paintings, Sleeping Effort (1953), as well as a series of five Pollock screen prints.

The Resurrection

In addition to contemporary abstraction, Hartt's acquisitions include El Greco’s The Resurrection (c. 1600–05), an important Renaissance painting that arguably, in its subordination of image to form, anticipates both modernism and expressionism. Hartt also acquired a small selection of Renaissance and Baroque drawings, each chosen for its ability to demonstrate a particular artistic theme or technique.

Notable among these is Peter Paul Rubens’s Parade of the Captured Chiefs (1600–08), copied from a work by Giulio Romano, the subject of Hartt’s dissertation. Other drawings include Giovanni Grimaldi’s two-sided Landscape with Tower and River Scene with Boats, and Luca Cambiaso’s Penitent Magdalene (c. 1570–1580).

Also on view will be Parnassus, a swiftly executed wash by an unidentified 16th-century French artist; and Two Female Figures, an academic study by an unidentified 16th-century Italian artist.

Rounding out the exhibition will be Hartt’s own Royal HH Typewriter. Custom ordered in pastel pink with cream-colored keys, it was the instrument on which Hartt composed much of his influential scholarship.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is committed to furthering critical thinking and visual literacy through a vital program of exhibitions, publications and accompanying events. The museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Today it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United States.

Support for Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction was generously provided by James M. Kemper Jr., the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation and the William T. Kemper Foundation.

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis will open with a public reception at 7 p.m. Friday, May 4, and will remain on view through Aug. 27. Both the reception and the exhibition are free and open to the public.

The Kemper Art Museum is located on the Danforth Campus, immediately adjacent to Steinberg Hall, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards.

Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The Museum is closed Tuesdays.

For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

Dynamo Theatre at Edison May 5

2012-04-27 00:00:00

Montreal’s Dynamo Theatre returns to Edison May 5 with Mur Mur (The Wall). Photo © Robert Etcheverry. Hi-res version available upon request.

Covered in both graffiti and secrets, a simple brick wall alternates between playground and refuge from the world.

On Saturday, May 5, Montreal’s Dynamo Theatre will return to St. Louis with Mur-Mur (The Wall), an acrobatic exploration of friendship and young love, as part of Edison’s ovations for young people series.

Tickets to the performance, which begins at 11 a.m., are $12 and are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or email edison@wustl.edu.

Dynamo Theatre was founded in 1981 by a group Montreal artists whose varying backgrounds ranged from gymnastics to mime to juggling. The group's vision was to create a dynamic theatrical experience that combined all of these movements with the depth of drama — a style they now call the “Theatre of Acrobatic Movement.”

Mur-Mur (The Wall), their latest show, centers on the friendships between two teenage couples and a pesky and incorrigible younger brother. With exuberant humor and acrobatic virtuosity, these five characters tell of quarrels, shared schemes and stolen kisses, capturing the moving and sweetly poignant world of young love and discovery.

"(Dynamo Theatre) tells stories using bodies and few words,” says Le Soleil. “Evocation and suggestion are key to its art while poetry and images give it wings ... Their muscles are eloquent and their precise movements and actions bring up striking images.”

“This brand of acrobatic theater is still theater, with plots, themes, and characters,” adds the New Times of Palm Beach. Dynamo “simply drives its narratives with back flips and cartwheels more than with dialogue.”

Edison Ovations Series

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors. The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

Sam Fox School presents annual alumni awards

2012-04-23 00:00:00

The Korundi Concert Hall in Rovaniemi, Finland, designed by Juhani Pallasmaa, who will recieve the 2012 Dean's Medal from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts April 26. Photo by Rauno Träskelin.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis honored seven outstanding architecture and art alumni at its fifth annual Awards for Distinction dinner April 26.

The awards recognized graduates who have demonstrated creativity, innovation, leadership and vision through their contributions to the practices of art, architecture and design, as well as to Washington University and the Sam Fox School.

This iconic promotional poster for the film E.T. was created by Intralink Film Graphic Design, the film marketing company founded by art alumnus Anthony Goldschmidt.

In addition, architect Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect SAFA, Hon. FAIA, Int FRIBA, of Helsinki, Finland, received the 2012 Dean’s Medal, which honors an individual whose extraordinary contributions have elevated the fields of art, architecture and design.

Distinguished architecture alumni for 2012 were Ann Meredith Rolland, AIA, LEED (BA ’80/MArch ’82) and Stephen Yablon, AIA, LEED AP (BA ’75), both of New York. In addition, John Kleinschmidt (BA ’08) and Andrew Sternad (BA ’09) of New Orleans received the Young Alumni Award.

Distinguished art alumni for 2012 were Paul Dillinger (BFA ’94) of San Francisco and Anthony Goldschmidt (BFA ’65) of Los Angeles. Aaron A. Duffy (BFA ’06) of Brooklyn, N.Y., received the Young Alumni Award.

The awards ceremony took place at the Coronado Ballroom.

Awards for distinction honorees

Paul Dillinger (BFA ’94)
San Francisco

Dillinger is senior director of global design for Levi Strauss & Co.’s Dockers brand. There, he has launched two new collections—K-1 by Dockers and The Art of Khaki — and sought to develop sustainability in both supply chain and design process.

He previously worked as a fashion designer and brand development specialist at fashion houses in New York, including Calvin Klein and DKNY, and in 2005 launched the Martin + Osa brand for American Eagle Outfitters. The first Fulbright Scholar in fashion design, he also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy.

Anthony Goldschmidt (BFA ’65)
Los Angeles

Goldschmidt is founder and president of Intralink Film Graphic Design, an industry-leading creative motion picture marketing company. After earning his MFA from Yale University, Goldschmidt began his career in 1967 as an art director at J. Walter Thompson in New York and as a production assistant at Warner Bros.

In 1979, he founded Intralink, the first creative design group to offer integrated print and audio-visual materials for motion picture marketing. Projects range from campaigns for E.T., The Color Purple and The Da Vinci Code, among many others, to design and branding of the 2012 Academy Awards.

Ann Meredith Rolland, AIA, LEED (BA ’80/MArch ’82)
New York

In a career focused almost exclusively on the design of cultural and educational buildings, Rolland has extensive experience in the renovation and expansion of existing buildings — primarily in the New York City region — transforming spaces into new environments that enrich, enliven and reflect the singular personality of each institution.

As a principal of FXFOWLE, which she joined in 1997, Rolland has led the development of its 25-person Cultural/Educational Studio from its inception and also serves on the firm’s Steering Committee. In addition, Rolland has worked with the Department of City Planning, the Landmarks Preservation Commission and other New York City agencies in developing compliant yet forward-thinking solutions.

Guest Pavilion, Sullivan's Island, SC, designed by architecture alumnus Stephen Yablon.

Stephen Yablon, AIA, LEED AP, (BA ’75)
New York

Yablon is founder and partner-in-charge of Stephen Yablon Architect (SYA), a New York-based office widely recognized for open, light-filled and carefully detailed spaces that respond to context and encourage social interaction.

SYA has designed institutional and commercial facilities as well as residential projects for a wide range of clients, including Columbia University, the City of New York, New York University’s Langone Medical Center and Sony. Some of the firm’s most notable work has involved public projects for underserved communities, including two created under the auspices of New York’s Design and Construction Excellence program.

Young Alumni Award

Aaron A. Duffy (BFA ’06)
Brooklyn, NY

Duffy is a partner and creative director at 1stAveMachine — which works with ad agencies and brands to create video, digital and experiential content across media platforms — and co-founder of the firm’s “alter-ego,” the mixed media animation studio SpecialGuest.

His numerous awards include first place at the Stuttgart International Trickfilm Festival, as well as bronze, silver and gold at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. His work has been inducted into MoMA’s archive for The Art and Technique of the American Commercial, and he was featured in AdAge’s “Creativity Awards Report 2011” as one of the top 10 commercial directors.

John Kleinschmidt (BA ’08)
Andrew Sternad (BA ’09)
New Orleans

Kleinschmidt and Sternad are intern architects at Waggonner & Ball Architects in New Orleans, where they have focused primarily on water management, infrastructure and spatial planning projects for the region.

As leaders in Dutch Dialogues, the firm’s pro bono water planning advocacy effort, the pair has worked with multidisciplinary teams of Dutch and American experts to re-envision New Orleans as a delta city that incorporates water into its urban planning strategies. They are actively involved in facilitating New Orleans-based projects for the Sam Fox School and have exhibited speculative proposals and interactive installations dealing with water and landscape in the Mississippi Delta.

Dean's Medal

Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect SAFA, Hon. FAIA, Int FRIBA
Helsinki, Finland

A distinguished architect, educator and critic, Pallasmaa is a leading international figure in contemporary architecture, design and art culture. Since 2008, he has served on the jury for the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.

From 2001-03, Pallasmaa was the Sam Fox School’s Raymond E. Maritz Visiting Professor of Architecture and he continues to work with students in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design’s international semester program in Helsinki.

In 2006, the Sam Fox School’s Peter MacKeith edited Encounters – Architectural Essays, a collection of Pallasmaa’s writings. Other books include The Embodied Image (2011), The Thinking Hand (2009), The Architecture of Image (2001) and The Eyes of the Skin (1996), the latter now a standard text in studios and seminars around the world.

Pallasmaa’s Helsinki-based practice has completed notable projects around the world, including the SIIDA Museum in Inari, Finland, an ethnographic museum and exhibition space for the Sami peoples of Northern Scandinavia; and renovations of the Finnish Institute in Paris and the Rovaniemi Art Museum in Finland.

Other major projects include collaborating on the design of the International Moscow Bank, which received the Russian Federation Architecture Award in 1996, that country's most prestigious architectural honor.

Pallasmaa is an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and has received the Finnish State Architecture Award (1992); the Helsinki City Culture Award (1993); the Fritz Schumacher Prize (Germany, 1997); and the Jean Tschumi Prize for Architectural Criticism, International Union of Architects (1999), among other honors.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

The Sam Fox School is a unique collaboration in architecture, art and design education. Offering professional studio programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the Sam Fox School links four academic units — the College of Art, College of Architecture, Graduate School of Art and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — with the university's nationally recognized Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

For more information about the awards, contact Aly Abrams at (314) 935-7223 or aly.abrams@wustl.edu. For more information about Sam Fox School, visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

Washington University Opera April 24 and 26

2012-04-19 00:00:00

Take three parts standard operatic repertoire, add two contemporary masterpieces, one not-so-standard bel canto and a dash of musical theatre.

The result is Opera Scenes, the semester-end program by Washington University Opera. This year's performances will take place at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, April 24 and 26, in the Ballroom Theatre of the 560 Music Center.

Ocel

“The Opera Scenes program is an informal event that is taken quite seriously,” says Tim Ocel, lecturer in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, who directs the performance.

Ocel notes that the ballroom setting, in which performers are surrounded by audience on three sides, “forces the student singers to create a complete and thorough characterization and to be as musically precise as possible.”

The program will include excerpts from Jules Massenet’s Manon, Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth and Giacomo Puccini's La Rondine as well as from two contemporary works, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah and Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco.

Rounding out the program will be scenes from The Secret Garden, the musical by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon; and from Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell.

The latter, Ocel notes, “is rarely performed because of its length and difficulty. The trio for three female voices is a stunning example of bel canto musicianship and will interest opera devotees who look for an opportunity to hear live a small portion of Rossini's final operatic work.”

The six performers include four master’s candidates — Keith Boyer, Anthony Heinemann, Kathleen Redmon and Kate Reimann — as well as two undergraduates: junior Colleen Batty and senior Rush Dorsett.

Pianist is Sandra Geary, teacher of applied music and co-director of the opera program. Musical direction is by senior lecturer Christine Armistead.

The performance is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Department of Music. The 560 Music Center is located in University City at 560 Trinity Ave.

For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email susan_wetzel@aol.com.

96 Minutes by alumna Aimee Lagos April 23

Liam Otten — 2012-04-18 00:00:00

Brittany Snow as Carley in 96 Minutes, the debut feature film by WUSTL alumnus Aimee Lagos. A free screening will take place in College Hall April 23.

As a Washington University undergraduate — studying social thought and analysis as well as legal studies in Arts & Sciences — Aimee Lagos tutored kids from East St. Louis and later interned with a neighborhood stabilization project.

Now a film director based in Los Angeles, Lagos will return to campus Monday, April 23, for a free screening of 96 Minutes, her feature-length debut. Loosely inspired by true events, the film centers on four teenagers from two different worlds, starkly divided by class — until those worlds slam together in the course of a carjacking.

“You tell the stories you know,” Lagos writes in her production notes. “Or at least the ones you know you must tell. This film is a tapestry of stories that have touched my life — people I’ve known, places I’ve been, truths that have rocked me and moved me to want to expose them in a new light.

“Everyone has a passion project, one that they work for years to get made,” she says. “96 Minutes was mine.”

Henry Schvey, PhD, professor in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, remembers Lagos as a talented actor who starred in his production of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, aka the “Yiddish Romeo and Juliet.”

“Aimee played the lead role of Leah, who was betrothed to a young scholar in early childhood,” Schvey remembers. “When her father reneges on this promise, the young man dies, brokenhearted, and Leah becomes possessed by a Dybbuk, or demonic spirit. Her performance was simply unforgettable.”

Schvey and Lagos kept in touch, and last fall Schvey attended a screening of 96 Minutes as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival, where it was named best debut feature.

The film begins moments after the carjacking but unfolds in non-linear fashion, interweaving scenes in the car with scenes from earlier in the day. Audiences witness the harrowing mayhem of abduction, but also learn the characters’ individual stories — where they come from, who they are and how they ended up together on that fateful night.

“I was stunned by the film's nuanced acting and brilliant writing and directing,” Schvey says. “I have never seen a more powerful film on the subject of race relations in America.

“It is that good.”

96 Minutes will begin at 7 p.m. in College Hall in the South 40 House. Lagos will be on hand to introduce the film and take questions afterward.

The event is sponsored by the PAD, the Office of Residential Life and the Film and Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences.

For more information, call (314) 935-5858.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8aN9cyVa38

Chancellor’s Concert April 22

2012-04-17 00:00:00

The 2012 Chancellor's Concert will feature more than 100 musicians from the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs.

Ah, spring. The rains rain, the flowers bloom, and the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences presents its annual Chancellor’s Concert.

The performance — which will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall — is among the largest-scaled of the year, featuring more than 100 musicians from the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Choirs.

Ward Stare

It also marks the first Chancellor’s Concert for the ensembles’ respective directors: Ward Stare, resident conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, and Nicole Aldrich, director of choral activities. Both joined the music department last summer.

The 2012 program will open with Symphony No. 96 “Miracle,” one of Franz Joseph Haydn’s 12 “London” symphonies. Written in 1791, during the composer’s wildly successful London debut, the piece gained its subtitle thanks to a memorable event and a case of mistaken attribution.

According to Albert Dies, an early 19th-century biographer, the audience at the premiere leapt to its collective feet and crowded the stage in applause — thus narrowly avoiding a falling chandelier that crashed to the empty seats below. Though subsequent scholars have shown that the incident occurred in 1795, not 1791, Symphony No. 96 continues to be known as Haydn’s “Miracle.”

The Chancellor’s Concert will continue with Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poem No. 2, Tasso: lamento e trionfo (“Tasso, Lament and Triumph”). Begun as rough sketches and initially completed by Liszt’s assistant, August Conradi, the piece debuted in 1849 as the overture to Torquato Tasso, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drama about the 16th century Italian poet.

Nicole Aldrich

Liszt, however, revised and expanded the work several times over the next several years. The Chancellor’s Concert will feature Liszt’s final version from 1856. The lament in the subtitle, as the composer explained in the score’s preface, invokes not only Goethe’s play but also the poem Lament of Tasso by Lord Byron.

Next will be Fern Hill (1960), an early work by the contemporary American composer John Corigliano. Based on the poem by Dylan Thomas, it was originally scored for mezzo-soprano, chorus, harp and strings. The April 22 program will feature a version reorchestrated for chamber orchestra by the composer in 1999.

Concluding the Chancellor’s Concert will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region (1905), a setting of Walt Whitman’s poem Darest Thou Now O Soul.

Conceived as part of an informal competition with fellow composer Gustav Holst (who set his own version of the same poem), Toward the Unknown Region premiered in 1907 and marked one of Vaughan Williams’ first major compositional successes.

The 560 Music Center is located at 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard. For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email susan_wetzel@aol.com.

PAD presents As You Like It April 20-29

Liam Otten — 2012-04-13 00:00:00

Sasha Diamond as Celia in the PAD's new production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It. Download hires image.

It is a moment of rising inequality. The widening gap between aristocratic haves and discontented have-nots threatens to replace the social contract with a powder keg.

As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, an homage to rural life filled with clowning, comically mannered royals and convoluted gender reversals.

But the play is more than just a pastoral romance. So says Annamaria Pileggi, senior lecturer in drama in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, who will direct the show beginning Friday, April 20, in Edison Theatre. (Performances run through Sunday, April 29.)

Malcolm Foley as Jaques. Download hires image.

Though Shakespeare set As You Like It in 15th-century France, “There is something about the greed and corruption of the world of the court, and the simplicity but also the poverty of the forest, that suggests the French Revolution,” Pileggi says.

On the other hand, Pileggi notes that the character of Corin, a tenant shepherd who attempts to sell his master’s farm, recalls the current foreclosure crisis.

“There are a number of elements that feel very contemporary,” she says.

So. The Bastille, or Zuccotti Park?

To square that production design circle, Pileggi and dramaturg Gabriela Schneider have taken a cue from the Steampunk movement, adopting a basically 18th-century look but including a few comically anachronistic touches from our own time: whistles, air horns, picketing protestors and rolling suitcases, to name a few.

The story centers on Rosalind, a young French noblewoman whose father, Duke Senior, was usurped and banished by his power-hungry brother, Duke Ferdinand.

Though Ferdinand resents his niece’s continued popularity among the people, Rosalind remains at court thanks to her friendship with Ferdinand’s daughter, Celia — until, that is, she falls in love with Orlando, the neglected youngest son of a rival clan.

Banished by her uncle, Rosalind disguises herself as a man and flees with Celia to the Forest of Arden, where, unbeknownst to her, a disguised Orlando takes shelter from his own bloodthirsty brother.

“What really drew me to As You Like It was the theme of mirroring,” Pileggi says. “In terms of gender, in terms of court versus forest, in terms of certain characters. There are two Dukes, two Jaques, two courts, two sets of brothers.”

Pileggi carries the theme through much of the show’s casting. Both Dukes are played by Eric Gustafson, while Mitch Eagles pulls double-duty as the noble Le Beau and the shepherd Silvius. Local equity actor Whit Reichart is Corin as well as Orlando’s servant, Adam. And, in a mirroring of Rosalind’s cross-dressing disguise, both the lords of Frederick’s court and the men of Senior’s forest are played by female actors in drag.

The spare stage design, by guest artist Otis Sweezey, professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, mimics the open platform of Shakespeare’s own Globe Theatre, with one Baroque addition: a set of vertical mirrors that serve as columns during court scenes and as trees during those set in the forest.

“I’ve added a prologue, in which we see peasants with ‘99 percent’ signs,” Pileggi says with a smile.

“With the mirrors on stage, the audience is literally going to see its own reflection.”

Artem Kreimer as Touchstone. Download hires image.

Additional cast and crew

Leading the cast of 22 are Selena Lane as Rosalind and Mike Kastelein as Orlando, with Sasha Diamond as Celia, Artem Kreimer as court fool Touchstone and Malcolm Foley as the melancholy lord Jaques.

Anna Constantino and Megan Lacerenza are the shepherdesses Phoebe and Audrey. Adam Strobel plays both the wrestler Charles and the shepherd William.

Se-in Kim is Sir Oliver Martext as well as Hymen, the Greek god of marriage. Yasmin Kuyumcu plays the second Jaques, Orlando’s brother. Ariel Saul is both Dennis, Oliver’s servant, and the musician Amiens, with Hayley Flagg accompanying on guitar.

Costumes are by Diana Chu, a junior in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Original music is composed and performed by Daniel Sarfati, a graduate student in music in Arts & Sciences.

Lighting is by senior Ben Lynford. Choreography is by Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal, professor of the practice of dance in Arts & Sciences. Prop master is Emily Frei.

Tickets and performances

Performances of As You Like It will take place in Edison Theatre at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22.

Performances continue the following weekend, at 8 p.m. April 27 and 28; and at 2 p.m. April 29.

Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. Tickets are $15, or $12 for Washington University faculty and staff and $10 for children, students and seniors. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and through all MetroTix outlets.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or visit padarts.wustl.edu.

Richard Sennett on ‘Architecture of Cooperation’

2012-04-12 00:00:00

Cover image from Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation by Richard Sennett. Frances Johnston, "Making a Staircase," Hampton Institute, undated glass-plate. Photograph (c) The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by  SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

****** THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES ******

Learning to live with people unlike ourselves — racially, ethnically, religiously or economically — is arguably the most urgent challenge facing civil society today.

Yet much of modern life, from talk radio to homogenous neighborhoods to the self-segregation of social media, encourages the us-against-them politics of the tribe, rather than the more cooperative spirit of the city.

Richard Sennett. Portrait by Thomas Struth.

In his latest book, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012), the distinguished sociologist and urban theorist Richard Sennett examines why this has happened and what might be done about it.

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, Sennett will present the Sam Fox School’s annual Eugene J. Mackey Jr. Lecture.

The free talk — titled "The Architecture of Cooperation" — is co-sponsored by the Brown School and takes place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. A reception for Sennett will precede the lecture at 6 p.m.

For more information, call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

Beginning with his first book, The Uses of Disorder, in 1970, Sennett has explored the ways individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts — about the cities in which they live and about the labor they do.

In Together, Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris and workers on Wall Street.

Sennett is author of more than a dozen books, including The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), which studies how working-class identities are shaped in modern societies; The Conscience of the Eye (1990), a work focusing on urban design; and Flesh and Stone (1992), a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.

Eugene J. Mackey Jr. Lecture

This endowed lecture honors Eugene J. Mackey Jr., a distinguished architect who practiced in partnership with Joseph Murphy, former dean of the School of Architecture.

Among other projects, Mackey and Murphy designed John M. Olin Library and collaborated with R. Buckminster Fuller on the design of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Climatron.

The Eugene J. Mackey Jr. Lecture brings significant patrons of architecture to campus. Past lecturers have included Gerald Edelman, Thomas Krens, Jorma Ollila, Emily Pulitzer, Richard Jackson, Eric J. Cesal and Alan Webber.

83rd annual Fashion Design Show April 29

Liam Otten — 2012-04-10 00:00:00

Double or Nothing, a large installation of woven sticks, branches and saplings by acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty, makes a fitting backdrop for original dresses and gowns by graduating seniors in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Fashion Design Program. Pictured is a taupe wedding dress by Ariel Baugh, inspired by abstract sculptures of birds and modeled by Antonia Isabella of the Barbizon Modeling Agency. All photographs by Jennifer Silverberg. Download hires version.

“As a designer, you want to make your statement,” says Jennifer Ingram, the W. H. Smith Visiting Assistant Professor of Fashion in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. “You want to inspire, you want to motivate, you want to communicate some type of emotion.”

Those ambitions and more will be on full display at Plaza Frontenac April 29 when Leaving a Legacy, the Sam Fox School's 83rd annual Fashion Design Show, hits the runway. The fully choreographed show will feature dozens of models wearing scores of outfits created by the program’s nine seniors and 10 juniors.

But this year’s show also speaks to one legacy in particular. It marks the retirement of Jeigh Singleton, who began teaching at Washington University in 1972 and has directed the Fashion Design program since 1987.

“Jeigh is one of a kind — a legendary instructor,” says Ingram, a fashion alumna who studied with Singleton before graduating in 2004. She spent several years working in the fashion industry before returning to campus last fall.

“He’s always been a mentor for me,” Ingram says. Indeed, in creating her own lines, “I still go to Jeigh for advice. What’s missing, how can I make this my own, what does it need to push the drama?

“Jeigh is all about drama,” she adds with a smile.

This wedding gown by Jung Hyun Lee was inspired by the wave-like shapes of abstract sculptures, here expressed as a cascade of folds. Model is Shameeka Greene of the Barbizon Modeling Agency. Photo by Jennifer Silverberg. Download hires version.

‘Glitz and glamour’

As a student, Ingram participated in the program’s 2003 and ’04 fashion shows, both held at St. Louis Galleria.

“I loved the glitz and the glamor of it,” she says. “There’s just something about seeing your garments go down that runway, with professional models, lighting and production. That’s what I want to bring to Leaving a Legacy.”

And though the title certainly honors Singleton, Ingram says, it also celebrates the accomplishments of the students, particularly the graduating seniors.

“Each of these designers puts a distinctive stamp on everything they do,” she says. “They make the patterns, drape the muslin, choose the fabrics.

“This show is their statement.”

Program

Leaving a Legacy will open with fall dress groups — four apiece by each of the nine seniors, for a total of 36 looks. Inspirations range from geometry class and the Arts & Crafts movement to “The Flirty Thirties” and the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Next, the junior class will present fall suiting on the theme of “Basic Training,” after which the seniors return with winter coats inspired by the 1940s. Other groupings will highlight knits, spring separates and gowns.

Concluding the show will be the seniors’ signature collections, each a fully coordinated clothing line tailored to a specific audience and based on a specific theme. Inspirations this year range from “Egyptian Gilt” and “Daughters of the Earth” to “Elemental Style” and “Spring Nouveau.”

All clothing is selected by a jury of university faculty and local design professionals. Guest judges for 2012 included Project Runway alumna Laura Kathleen; image specialist Ellen Soule; and Janey Brauer Thompson, co-owner of Berrybridge Bridal.

This ballgown of transparent tulle by Corissa Santos features a bodice with navy blue pleated bands and a 50's-length skirt beneath. Model is Heather Rice of the Barbizon Modeling Agency. Photo by Jennifer Silverberg. Download hires version.

Tickets and times

Leaving a Legacy will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 29, at Plaza Frontenac. Tickets are $65 for general seating, or $50 for students.

Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and metrotix.com. A limited number will be available at the door.

In addition, special reserved seating is available for $150, with proceeds going to support the fashion program.

Preceding the show, at 6 p.m., will be a reception featuring experimental garments by Jamie Presson-Wells, a fashion alumnus and current master’s candidate in the Graduate School of Art, and by sophomore Madeleine Docherty.

A meet-and-greet with all designers will immediately follow, at 8 p.m.

For more information, call (314) 935-6500 or email samfoxschool@wustl.edu.

Organizers and co-sponsors

Leaving a Legacy is chaired by alumna Susan Block (BFA ’76) and co-hosted by Block and Saskya Emmink–Byron, director of communications for Craft Alliance.

Stylists are led by Dominic Bertani of the Dominic Michael Salon, who has done the models’ hair for the past 20 years. The models’ makeup will be done by Shiseido Cosmetics, led by Sheila Molina, and by students from The Paul Mitchell School. Footwear is provided by Brown Shoe Company and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Lighting, audio and runway tech is by Trent Joyce of Technical Productions. DJ is Doug Curtis of Clockwork Productions.

Outstanding student designers receive a variety of scholarships, cash prizes and awards. The Dominic Michael Silver Scissors Designer of the Year Award is presented to one outstanding senior at the end of the evening. Block sponsors the Silver Ripper Award, presented to one outstanding junior.

WUSTL film scholar Gaylyn Studlar discusses Titanic

2012-04-09 00:00:00

http://youtu.be/NZIC0jDO1eE

As the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic draws near, Gaylyn Studlar, PhD, director of Film and Media Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses film adaptations of the event and why James Cameron’s Titanic has become the iconic version of the tragedy.

Studlar also discusses the changing tastes of movie-goers and how they may impact the 3D re-release of Cameron’s film.

Studlar, the David May Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, is co-editor of Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, a collection of 13 essays exploring what made Titanic such a popular movie and analyzing its representations of class, sexuality, gender, history, celebrity and contemporary social and economic concerns.

Cheryl Strayed to read April 12 for Writing Program

2012-04-09 00:00:00

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything. Her mother died of cancer, her family scattered in grief, her marriage was soon destroyed and her life spun slowly out of control.

Cheryl Strayed

Four years later, feeling she had nothing more to lose, Strayed made an impulsive decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone.

The story of that journey, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State, is told in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Strayed’s New York Times bestselling memoir.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, April 12, Strayed will read from her work for Washington University in St.Louis’ Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

The talk — presented as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

In addition to Wild, Strayed is the author of the novel Torch (2006) and the forthcoming Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of her "Dear Sugar" columns for TheRumpus.net. Her writing also has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Allure, Self, The Missouri Review, Brain, Child and The Sun, among others.

Strayed’s essays and stories have been anthologized in The Best American Essays and The Best New American Voices. Torch was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top 10 books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest.

Other honors include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Strayed holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

She is a founding member of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, and serves on its board of directors. Raised in Minnesota, she now lives in Portland, Ore., with her husband, filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.

Inland Symposium: CST April 12 and 13

Liam Otten — 2012-04-05 00:00:00

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Inland Visual Studies Center at Bradley University will present the third annual Inland Symposium: CST, examining arts and culture in the American Midwest, April 12 and 13.

From the galleries of New York to the backlots of Hollywood, visual culture in the United States is often defined as coastal and urban. Yet historically, large numbers of artists and designers have emerged from the unique population, landscape and economy of the American Midwest.

On Thursday and Friday, April 12 and 13, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis will host Inland Symposium: CST, the third annual Inland Visual Studies Center symposium.

Titled for the abbreviation of Central Standard Time, Inland Symposium: CST will investigate contemporary cultural production in the Midwest and examine the region’s contribution to national and global visual arts and culture.

Patricia Olynyk

“There’s this notion that the Midwest is a place to which one brings culture,” says organizer Patricia Olynyk, the Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art, "but that culture isn't generated here.

"The situation doesn't flatten into anything quite so simple,” adds Olynyk, an internationally exhibited artist who has lived on the west coast and overseas but also spent eight years at the University of Michigan before joining the Sam Fox School in 2007, as director of the Graduate School of Art.

Yet such perceptions nevertheless shape conversations about art “between the coasts.” Even among inland advocates, she says, “the discourse is still from the perspective of the marginalized.”

Olynyk prefers a more positive tack.

“In my experience, the Midwest is a great place to make work,” she says. “The benefits are obvious.” She points to the low cost of living, the affordable studio space and the general pace of life. “I can get into the studio for extended periods of time.”

Moreover, as a kind of national crossroads, “the Midwest is a place that one comes into and out of,” she says. “The relationship between the local and the global works very well.”

For Inland Symposium, Olynyk and co-organizer Paul Krainak, director of the Inland Visual Studies Center, have recruited more than a dozen artists, curators and writers from across the Midwest. Sessions will explore the production, exhibition and reception of contemporary art in the region, as well as the influence of timing and travel on artists living and working there.

Keynote speakers will be Stephanie Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; and Barbara Jaffee, PhD, associate professor of art history at Northern Illinois University.

All events are free and open to the public but advance registration is required. For more information, call (314) 935-9300; e-mail samfoxschool@wustl.edu; or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

The Inland Visual Studies Center is the only academic program specifically seeking to theorize a more authentic and complex cultural identity of Middle America and to analyze the Midwest's contributions to national and global art.

Located at Bradley University in Peoria, the center is supported by the Sam Fox School, Ohio State University and the Prairie Center of the Arts in Peoria.

Schedule of Events:

Thursday, April 12

5 p.m.
Keynote lecture: Barbara Jaffee
Welcome remarks: Carmon Colangelo
Introduction: Buzz Spector
Steinberg Auditorium

6:30 p.m.
In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country
Opening reception for exhibition featuring work by MFA students from the Sam Fox School's Graduate School of Art
4191 Manchester Ave.

Friday, April 13

9 a.m.
Panel No. 1: Place Discourse
Moderators: Paul Krainak and Robert Gero
Panelists: Barbara Jaffee, Jack Becker, Buzz Spector and Jessica Baran
Kemp Auditorium, Givens Hall

11 a.m.
Panel No. 2: Show Me: The Delights and Drawbacks of Contemporary Exhibitions in the Midwest
Moderator: Dominic Molon
Panelists: Martin Brief, Deb Sokolow and Dana Turkovic
Kemp Auditorium, Givens Hall

2 p.m.
Mildred Lane Kemper Museum tour
With curators Meredith Malone, Karen Butler and Robert Gero

2:45 p.m.
Panel No. 3: Time Travel: Production in the Midwest
Moderator: Irena Knezevic
Panelists: Jimenez Lai, Joerg Becker, Patricia Olynyk and David Hart
Kemp Auditorium, Givens Hall

4:45 p.m.
Keynote lecture: Stephanie Smith
Introduction: Patricia Olynyk
Steinberg Auditorium

6 p.m.
Panel No. 4: Sculpting & Exhibiting Under the Influence
Moderators: Joan Hall and Ron Fondaw
Panelists: Marilu Knode, Bill FitzGibbons, Rusty Freeman, Noah Kirby and Anna Hegarty
Kemp Auditorium, Givens Hall

St. Louis Humanities Festival April 13 and 14

Liam Otten — 2012-04-03 00:00:00

Reluctant community activist Daniel Goldstein fights New York’s massive Atlantic Yards project in Battle for Brooklyn. The controversial documentary will be screened April 14 as part of the first annual St. Louis Humanities Festival.

In 1990, the Illinois Humanities Council presented a daylong event on the theme “Expressions of Freedom.” And so was born the Chicago Humanities Festival, today one of the nation’s premier celebrations of the liberal arts.

Novelist and Yosemite National Park ranger Shelton Johnson will speak April 13 on "Gloryland: Literature and Interpretive History as Tools for Social Change."

Now, it’s St. Louis’ turn.

Later this month, the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis — in partnership with the Missouri Humanities Council, Webster University and University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Center for the Humanities — will present the first St. Louis Humanities Festival. Organizers plan to make it an annual event.

The two-day event, which takes place Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14, will feature talks by Shelton Johnson, a novelist and Yosemite park ranger, who is featured in Ken Burns' film series The National Parks; and Brian Turner, an Iraq War veteran-turned-poet.

Rounding out the schedule will be a screening of the controversial documentary Battle for Brooklyn, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Michael Galinsky.

“The Chicago Humanities Festival, which we are trying to emulate, started out in just this modest way,” says Gerald L. Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities. “But I think this is a pretty important effort of bringing institutions together to do something for the good of the city and region.”

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call (314) 935-5576; email cenhum@artsci.wustl.edu or visit cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=575Vh3zgGDI&feature=player_embeddedShelton Johnson

The festival will begin at 10 a.m. Friday, April 13, with a lecture by Johnson in the Century Rooms of UMSL’s Millennium Student Center.

Titled “Gloryland: Literature and Interpretive History as Tools for Social Change," the talk will feature a reading from Gloryland, Johnson’s 2009 novel about 19th-century “Buffalo Soldiers” — African-American members of the U.S. Calvary. Published by the Sierra Club, the book is largely based on Johnson’s research at Yosemite, where he has worked since 1984.

In addition, Johnson, who was born and raised in Detroit, will discusses his concerns about the low numbers of minority visitors to the National Parks and why we need to work to ensure that all Americans feel welcome and at home in the parks and other natural areas of America.

Soldier-turned-poet Brian Turner will read from his work April 13. Photo by Kim Buchheit.

Brian Turner

Events will continue at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 13, with a reading by Turner in Room 253 of Webster University’s East Academic Building.

The author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005), Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division.

Turner’s poetry has been featured in numerous journals and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology, published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner also was featured in Operation Homecoming, a documentary collecting firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women in their own words.

Also on the program will be poetry readings by veterans who have participated in a project, sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council, to teach creative writing to veterans as a part of their re-acclimation process. Missouri poet laureate and Webster professor David Clewell will be master of ceremonies.

Battle for Brooklyn

Events will conclude at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 14, with a screening of Battle for Brooklyn in Washington University’s Brown Hall.

Exploring the erosion of individual rights amidst corporate and political maneuvering, Battle for Brooklyn relates the very public and very passionate fight between residents of Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Heights neighborhood and developers behind Atlantic Yards, a massive plan encompassing 16 skyscrapers and a basketball arena for the NBA's New Jersey Nets.

The film focuses on graphic designer Daniel Goldstein, a reluctant activist whose apartment sits at what would be center court of the new arena.

Battle for Brooklyn is produced and directed by Galinsky and Suki Hawley, who previously collaborated on the documentaries Horns and Halos (2002), Radiation (1999) and Half-Cocked (1994).

In attendance will be Galinsky and Bruce Lindsey, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration and dean of architecture in WUSTL's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Young Choreographers Showcase April 6-8

2012-03-29 00:00:00

Marleigh Stern's R.E.M. will be one of 10 original dances featured in the 2012 Young Choreographers Showcase April 6-8. Pictured are dancers Brianna Coppersmith, Andrea Roberts, Lauren Abadie, Zoe Roberts and Amanda Matheson. Photo by David Marchant. Hires version available upon request.

Washington University in St. Louis' Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present its fifth biennial Young Choreographers Showcase Friday through Sunday, April 6-8, in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio.

The concert will feature more than a dozen dancers in 10 original works created by student choreographers in the PAD's Dance Program.

Performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 6 and 7; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 8.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for students, seniors and WUSTL faculty and staff. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office and all MetroTix outlets. The Annelise Mertz Dance Studio is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

‘The strongest version of itself’

“Young Choreographers Showcase represents the full spectrum of our dancers’ interests and activities,” says David W. Marchant, professor of the practice in dance, who serves as co-artistic director for the showcase, along with senior Brianna Coppersmith.

Dances are chosen by a jury comprising Coppersmith, Marchant and three other members of the dance faculty: Mary-Jean Cowell, associate professor of dance; Christine Knoblauch-O'Neal, professor of the practice in dance; and Cecil Slaughter, senior lecturer in dance.

"Once works are selected by the panel, virtually all aspects of the show, both onstage and behind the scenes, are managed by the students themselves,” Marchant says, “though faculty continue to provide feedback to help choreographers realize their works.”

Coppersmith adds that, “In terms of choreography, concept and lighting, instructors ask us the sorts of questions that allow a piece to become the strongest version of itself. However, much of the show's success depends on students collaborating with students — student choreographers and dancers collaborating with student lighting designers and tech crew.

“None of us began YCS totally green, but I've noticed this freshness, this thrilling uncertainty, to what each student is doing,” Coppersmith says. “We're all curious artists and our eyes are wide open. We're eager to learn as much as we can from one another.”

Still, few things focus the mind and body like an impending performance.

“In rehearsal, we're all dancers and we share a movement vocabulary that makes a common sense,” Coppersmith says. “But there is something unfamiliar about anticipating an audience and an audience review. It's hard not to speculate how it will be understood or perceived.

“It's a privilege to present at YCS, and none of us want to disappoint our dancers, the faculty, the department or the audience,” she says.

“I think we’re all learning that it’s a demanding art, to compose an ‘interesting’ dance.”

See accompanying slideshow for program details as well as choreographers' descriptions of their works. All photos by David Marchant.

‘Plato and Modern Drama’ April 5

2012-03-28 00:00:00

Most philosophy makes little mention of the theater except to denounce it as a place of illusion and moral decay. The theater has tended to respond in kind by steering away from philosophy, driven by the notion that theater consists of actions, not ideas.

Martin Puchner

In The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (2010), Martin Puchner, PhD, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, argues that despite this mutual evasion, the histories of philosophy and theater have in fact been crucially intertwined.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, April 5, Puchner will present Washington University in St. Louis’ 10th Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture. Titled “Plato and Modern Drama,” the talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences. It will take place in Room 276 of the Danforth University Center, 6475 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information or to RSVP, call the PAD at (314) 935-5224 or email terri.green@wustl.edu.

In addition to The Drama of Ideas, Puchner is author of Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (2006), which won the James Russell Lowell Award from the Modern Language Association; and Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (2002/2011).

Puchner’s editorial work includes an edition of Six Plays of Henrik Ibsen (2003), a new edition of Lionel Abel's Metatheater (2003), and a four-volume collection of critical essays on modern drama, Critical Concepts: Modern Drama (2008). He is the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature and a co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Drama. His essays have appeared in Bookforum, The London Review of Books and n+1.

The Morrin Lecture is named for Washington University alumna Helen Clanton Morrin (1913-1997). After a career that spanned journalism, public affairs and volunteerism — and included 19 years as executive director of the Council of World Affairs — Morrin completed a master of liberal arts degree in 1994, at the age of 82.

The lecture was established in her memory in 1998 by her children, Peter Morrin, Kevin Morrin and Sheila Humphreys, as well as by friends and colleagues.

Songs of love and marriage April 1

2012-03-26 00:00:00

The Washington University choirs performing in Graham Chapel last fall. Photo by Whitney Curtis/WUSTL Photo Services.

Many waters cannot quench love.
Nor will rivers overflow it

— Song of Songs 8:7a.

Written in 1956 as a gift for a friend’s wedding, Daniel Pinkham’s Wedding Cantata consists of four movements based on texts from The Song of Songs (aka The Song of Solomon), the Biblical book most explicitly dedicated to the joys of earthly love.

At 3 p.m. Sunday, April 1, the Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Chamber Choir will present Pinkham’s Wedding Cantata as the centerpiece of “Many Waters,” a concert of songs about love and marriage.

Nicole Aldrich

The performance, directed by Nicole Aldrich, is free and open to the public and will take place in Graham Chapel. Pianist will be Sandra Geary, teacher of applied music in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.

Graham Chapel is located immediately north of the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email susan_wetzel@aol.com.

Also featured on the program will be Johann Sebastian Bach's Der Herr denket an uns (“The Lord careth for us”).

Though its origins remain in doubt, the piece is believed to date from the early 18th century and was likely composed for a wedding. (Scholars speculate that it was written for the wedding of Johann Lorenz Stauber and Regina Wedemann, in 1708. Wedemann was the aunt of Bach's wife; Stauber officiated at Bach’s own marriage the year before.)

Other highlights will include Six Madrigals, by the contemporary composer William Hawley; and Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs, set to texts by his wife, the soprano Hila Plitmann.

Rounding out the program will be Let the People Praise Thee, O God by William Mathias, which was written for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana; Ubi caritas by Paul Mealor, which was written for the wedding of Prince William and Kate; and folk songs from the United States, Newfoundland and Finland.

Drawing musicians from across the campus community, both the Concert Choir and the new Chamber Choir perform masterworks from five centuries and across many cultures, encompassing sacred and secular works, folk and art music, and accompanied and a cappella repertoire.

Fringe Figure Film Series March 27, 28 and 29

2012-03-21 00:00:00

Jean-Paul Belmondo as Ferdinand in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965).

Fracture, fragmentation and juxtaposition. Over the course of the 20th century, such modernist techniques would become defining traits of both popular and avant-garde film.

Film, in turn, would profoundly influence the work of the contemporary British artist John Stezaker. Using vintage movie stills, along with old postcards and other found materials, Stezaker creates delicate collages that are at once witty, ironic and subtly disturbing.

Next week, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic films — all selected by Stezaker himself — as part of its Fringe Figure Film Series. Screenings will include Carol Reed’s The Third Man (March 27), Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (March 28) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (March 29).

The series is held in conjunction with John Stezaker, a retrospective collecting more than 90 of the artist’s works. The exhibition remains on view at the Kemper Art Museum through April 23.

Karen Butler, assistant curator, who coordinated the exhibition for the Kemper Art Museum, points to certain parallels between Stezaker’s art and the selected films. For example, Stezaker’s Third Person Archive, which often depicts unidentified figures passing each other in cityscapes, recalls a famous scene in The Third Man, in which two characters walk past one another without acknowledgement.

“John speaks about his work as being unlike film, but I think he made a connection between these scenes of disconnected individuals,” Butler says. “Pierrot le Fou too has this sense of disconnect or unexpected juxtapositions or actions,” she adds, “though I think the connections [to Stezaker’s work] are perhaps more thematic than structural.”

All three screenings are free and open to the public and begin at 7 p.m. at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd.

The Kemper Art Museum is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.

For more information about the film festival or the exhibition, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

Schedule

7 p.m. Tuesday, March 27
The Third Man (1949)
Directed by Carol Reed
Based on a screenplay by novelist Graham Greene, this British film noir stars Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins, an American writer traveling to post-war Vienna to take a job with childhood friend Harry Lime. But when Martins arrives, he finds that Lime has been struck by a car and killed. Moreover, Martins soon discovers that his friend was in fact a black marketer, wanted by police, and that his death may have been no accident.

7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28
Psycho (1960)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock's macabre masterpiece stars Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, a troubled hotelier who seems excessively dominated by his mother; and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a frustrated Phoenix office worker who absconds to California after spontaneously embezzling $40,000. But Crane’s journey comes to a premature end with Hitchcock’s notorious shower scene, leaving a sister and a private detective to retrace her path to the Bates Motel.

7 p.m. Thursday, March 29
Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Tender and cruel, real and surreal, terrifying and funny: Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (the title translates as “Pete the Madman” or “Crazy Pete”) defies categorization. The story centers on Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a bored Parisian who flees his bourgeois existence with his babysitter and ex-lover, Marianne (Anna Karina). Like an existential Bonnie and Clyde, the couple battles gangsters, gas station attendants and American tourists as they come face to face with their own roles as characters in a pop-cultural landscape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycg2yb3qiUo

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

George Saunders March 27 and 29

2012-03-21 00:00:00

Inner Horn is a small country. So small, in fact, that only one citizen at a time can fit inside, leaving the other six residents to wait their turns in the adjoining Short-Term Residency Zone. But when Inner Horn unexpectedly shrinks, the population spills into neighboring Outer Horn — a crisis that quickly gives rise to a jingoistic dictator named Phil.

George Saunders. Photo by Caitlin Saunders.

Such is the premise of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005), a wickedly funny and wildly original political allegory by George Saunders.

Next week, Saunders, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, will deliver a pair of events for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, Saunders will deliver a talk on the craft of fiction, followed by a reading from his own work at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 29.

Both events — presented as The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series — are free and open to the public and take place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall.

A reception and book signing will immediately follow each. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

In addition to The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Saunders, a professor of creative writing  at Syracuse University, is the author of three short story collections — In Persuasion Nation (2006), Pastoralia (2000) and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) — as well as a collection of essays, The Braindead Megaphone (2007), and a bestselling children’s book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2000).

In 2000, The New Yorker named Saunders one of the "Best Writers Under 40." In 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant for "bring(ing) to contemporary American fiction a sense of humor, pathos, and literary style all his own."

"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut,” notes Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times. “(His) satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."

Saunders earned a bachelor's degree in 1981 from the Colorado School of Mines and master's in 1988 from Syracuse University. Prior to joining the Syracuse faculty, in 1997, he worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer at Radian International in Rochester, New York, from 1989-1996.

Saunders’ fiction appears regularly in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire and GQ, among many others.

African Grace: Soweto Gospel Choir March 23

2012-03-07 00:00:00

The internationally acclaimed Soweto Gospel Choir will return to Washington University with a new program, titled African Grace, March 23 as part of the Edison Ovations Series. Hires photos available upon request.

A lone tenor takes the stage. Her voice is hushed and plaintive over a pair of drums but quickly grows full and strong as she’s joined by a score of fellow singers.

The song is Jesu Ngowethu, a traditional Zulu spiritual, and it marks the beginning of African Grace, the new program by Soweto Gospel Choir. Drawn from many of South Africa’s finest choirs, this Grammy Award-winning “super group” has toured throughout the world, earning international acclaim for its joyful mix of African rythms and Western-style harmonies.

Later this month, Soweto Gospel Choir will return to St. Louis as part of the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University.

The special one-night-only performance will begin at 8 p.m. Friday, March 23, in the university’s 560 Music Center. Tickets are $35, or $30 seniors, $25 for Washington University faculty and staff and $20 for students and children.

Tickets are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. The 560 Music Center is located in the Delmar Loop at 560 Trinity Ave.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543, e-mail edison@wustl.edu or visit edison.wustl.edu.

African Gospel

Before the arrival of Western religions, traditional African music was largely rooted in song and percussion. Music ranging from praise songs to the rites of the traditional healer — secular music being largely nonexistent — typically followed a call-and-response form, with each tribal group boasting its own distinctive style.

But as Christian missionaries arrived in Africa in the early 19th century, mission schools became a major source of education, including musical training. Today, gospel music permeates the fabric of southern Africa. The region is home to more than 5,000 independent Christian churches, many of which hold services in the open air.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK1ns71G7j8&feature=player_embeddedSoweto Gospel Choir with U2

Soweto Gospel Choir

Soweto Gospel Choir was formed in Novemer 2002. David Mulovhedzi, now music director and choirmaster, and executive producer Beverly Byer, hosted auditions for the very best singers in Mulovhedzi's own Holy Jerusalem Choir, various Soweto churches and the general public.

The choir’s first album, Voices from Heaven, was recorded the following month and, within three weeks of its U.S. release, reached the top of Billboard’s World Music Chart. They soon collected a series of awards, including the 2003 American Gospel Music Award for Best Choir of the Year and Australia’s prestigious Helpmann Award for Best Contemporary Music Concert.

Subsequent albums woud include Blessed and African Spirit, which won the 2007 and 2008 Grammy Awards for Best Traditional World Music, and Live at the Nelson Mandela Theatre, which was nominated for a 2009 Grammy for Best Conteporary World Music. In 2010 the choir received its fourth Grammy nomination for Grace.

In addition, Soweto Gospel Choir has performed and recorded with a who’s-who of Western artists, ranging from Robert Plant and Diana Ross to Josh Groban and U2. In 2009, the song Down to Earth, which they recorded with Peter Gabriel for the film Wall-E, won a Grammy for Best Movie Song. Later that year, the choir became the first South African artist to perform at the Academy Awards, singing Down to Earth with John Legend.

Today, Soweto Gospel Choir features more than 50 performers drawn from across South Africa, including 24 singers as well as live dancers, musicians and drummers. The group sings in eight languages, though most of its recordings are in English, Zulu or Sotho. Its repertoire spans popular songs, African Gospel, folk anthems and traditional spirituals.

Billboard notes that, “These absolutely thrilling singers need nothing but their voices to make dazzling music,” while The New York Times calls Soweto Gospel Choir “Meticulous and unstoppable …spirited and spectacular.”

The Sunday Herald of Scotland adds that “you don’t have to be a believer to be inspired.”

Community Outreach

In addition to performing, Soweto Gospel Choir works to support the local communities from which its members are drawn. In August 2003, the choir established its own charity foundation, Nkosi’s Haven/Vukani (meaning “to arise, do something!”), which raises funds for AIDS orphans.

In November 2003, the group shared the stage with Bono, Peter Gabriel, the Eurythmics and others at Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Concert in Cape Town. That event helped launch a worldwide campaign to raise awareness of the devastating impact of AIDS in Africa.

Edison Theatre

Community Day at Kemper Art Museum March 31

2012-03-20 00:00:00

Families enjoying the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum's first Community Day last fall. Photo by Whitney Curtis.

As a young child, Josef Albers watched his handyman father paint houses. Josef grew up to become a famous artist, studying color and reducing images to their simplest shapes.

On Saturday, March 31, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host its spring Community Day, a free afternoon of all-ages activities, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Events will include tours, performances, art-making and a reading of the children’s book An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers, which depicts a diminutive Albers climbing amongst his signature, multicolored squares.

The reading, which begins at 11:30 a.m., will take place in the museum’s permanent collection gallery, which includes Albers’ Homage to the Square: Aurora, 1951-55.

At 1 p.m., assistant curator Karen Butler will lead a guided walk-through of the exhibition John Stezaker, which features more than 90 collages constructed from classic movie stills, vintage postcards, book illustrations and other found materials. In addition, local artists Maria Ojascastro and Joyce Yarbrough will lead collage and silhouette-making activities.

Other events will include scavenger hunts, button-making and performances by WUSTL a capella group The Stereotypes, at 12:30 p.m., and WU-SLam, the university’s spoken-word poetry group, at 2 p.m.

“Community Day is a chance for everyone in St. Louis to enjoy a day of art, art-making, games, music, snacks and much more,” says Allison Taylor, manager of education programs.

“Building on the success of last fall’s Community Day, we’ve added even more activities for families and children,” Taylor says. “Everything is free and parking is easy on the weekends, so I hope to see lots of people at the museum.”

The Kemper Art Museum is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Lemonade and cookies will be served throughout the day.

Community Day is funded in part by a grant from the Women’s Society of Washington University.

For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

The museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Today, it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United States.

Regular museum hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.

Ashely Lucas on “Prisoners, Family and Performance” March 26

2012-03-20 00:00:00

Playwright, actor and theater scholar Ashley Lucas, PhD, assistant professor of dramatic art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), will speak on “Prisoners, Families and Performance: Community Engagement Through the Arts” at 4 p.m. Monday, March 26, in Eliot Hall on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

Lucas is the 2012 Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship Speaker. She developed an interview-based play, Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass, about the families of prisoners, which she has toured as a one-woman performance since 2004.

Her talk will blend moments of performance with scholarly analysis of the effects of the prison industrial complex on women and families — and will argue that the arts can enable types of civic engagement and community dialogue which neither activism nor scholarship alone can engender.

“Prisoners, Families and Performance” is free and open to the public and will take place in Eliot, Room 300. A reception will immediately follow. For more information, call (314) 935-5576 or e-mail cenhum@wustl.edu.

Lucas’ research and teaching interests include U.S. Latino theater, prison-related theater, theater for social change and related topics in acting, playwriting and comparative ethnic studies.

She earned a bachelor's degree in theater studies and English from Yale University. as well as a joint doctorate in Ethnic Studies and Theatre and Drama from UC San Diego.

She is a fellow of both the UNC Faculty Engaged Scholars Program and UNC’s Institute for Arts and Humanities.

The Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship is housed within the Center for the Humanities at Washington University and supports undergraduate students as they undertake independent research projects based in the humanities or humanistic social sciences under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

Support for the Kling Fellowship is also provided by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Joy Williams to read March 21

2012-03-19 00:00:00

Misanthropic Alice is a budding eco-terrorist. Corvus has dedicated herself to mourning. Annabel is desperate to pursue the indulgences of ordinary American life. Misfit and motherless, these three teenage girls traverse a surreal desert landscape of eccentric characters, air-conditioning and darkly illuminating signs and portents.

Joy Williams

Welcome to The Quick and the Dead, the fourth novel by acclaimed fiction writer Joy Williams. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, Williams will read from her work for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Sponsored as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series, the event is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201 Duncker Hall.

A reception and book signing will immediately follow. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

In addition to The Quick and the Dead, which was nominated for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, Williams is author of the novels State of Grace (1973) — a finalist for the National Book Award — The Changeling (1978) and Breaking and Entering (1988).

Her story collections include Taking Care (1982), Escapes (1990) and Honored Guest (2004). Her work is widely anthologized and has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Granta and Grand Street. In 1999, she received the Rea Award for the short story.

Other books include the essay collection Ill Nature (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, and a travel guide, The Florida Keys (1986).

James Salter has written that Williams belongs, “in the company of Céline, Flannery O’Connor and Margaret Atwood,” while Don DeLillo, writing of The Quick and the Dead, noted that, “Joy Williams has produced a hard, sharp, comic novel about the off-kilter genius of adolescence — and a work of maverick insight and rash and beautiful bursts of language.”

Born in 1944 in Massachusetts, Williams graduated from Marietta College and earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Iowa in 1965. She has taught at the University of Houston, University of Florida, University of Iowa and the University of Arizona.

She lives in Arizona and Key West.

Camden & Lilly March 29-April 1

Liam Otten — 2012-03-16 00:00:00

Junior Peter Winfrey and freshman Kiki Milner as the titular characters in Camden & Lilly, a world premiere play by Carter W. Lewis, play-wright-in-residence. Photo by David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services. Download hires image.

“The truth is puddles of predictability. This is going to have music and dancing and people dying, and it’s going to be amazing.”

So observes Lilly, a 14-year-old novelist whose latest story may or may not be based on her own recently deceased mother. But the line could well serve as a statement-of-purpose for Camden & Lilly, the new play by Carter W. Lewis, which will receive its world premiere later this month at Washington University in St. Louis.

“It’s a departure for me,” says Lewis, playwright-in-residence in WUSTL’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Science. “I usually take on some kind of serious subject that I’m confused about or angry about or need to explore personally.

“This is more lyrical, more fantasy-oriented,” he says. “I’m kind of sticking my neck out and experimenting with things, trying to create character through elements like music and dance and narration. It’s been a little exhilarating and a little frightening.”

Camden & Lilly

Set in a small, unnamed Midwestern town, Camden & Lilly begins sometime after the strange and unaccountable death of Lilly’s mother, Aurelia, one of the nation’s few female orchestra conductors.

“Lilly blames the mayor because he cut off funding to the orchestra,” Lewis says. “The orchestra dissolved and Aurelia essentially dissolved with it.”

As the story opens, Lilly and her older brother, Camden, are crouching in the bushes outside the mayor’s house, exchanging sibling banter and peering occasionally through a pair of opera glasses. The scene captures both Lilly’s obsessiveness and her close relationship with Camden, who is now acting as her guardian. Yet Camden’s attentions are, by necessity, increasingly turned to the world of adult responsibility — and to his girlfriend, Layla, a corporate lawyer.

“As a playwright, Carter has many fortés,” says director Andrea Urice, senior lecturer in the PAD. “Characters are richly crafted, dialogue is great, relationships are meaty and complex.

“All those things remain true of Camden & Lilly,” Urice says, “but this play also speaks to intangible and intuitive feelings and passions. It isn’t necessarily structured with the same kind of psychological linearity. A may lead to B, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to C.

“That’s fun to sort out,” Urice says, “but it requires a different way of thinking.”

Camden & Lilly marks the sixth collaboration between Lewis and Urice, who previously worked together on the premieres of American Storm (2002), Kid Peculiar at the Coral Court Motel (2004) and civil disobedience (2007), all for the PAD; and of Ordinary Nation (2006) and Evie’s Waltz (2008) for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

In building the world of Camden & Lilly, Urice and the design team developed a cool, semi-abstracted set that partitions the stage into three distinct layers. Downstage becomes the family home; the middle section handles a variety of locations, from mayor’s office to Aurelia’s grave. But the third, furthermost layer belongs to Aurelia herself, who observes and occasionally comments on the action below.

“The other characters sort of sense her presence,” Lewis says. “She’ll move and they’ll seem to react; she’ll say something and they’ll seem to hear it.”

“I don’t think of it as haunting,” he hastens to add. Aurelia’s “ghost” is psychological rather than spiritual; an expression of her memory as it lives on in those who loved her. “In Lilly’s mind, Aurelia is ever-present.”

Or, as Lilly herself dryly asks, “Is my mother truly dead, or is she merely butting-in from a further distance?"

Cast and crew

The cast of five is led by freshman Kiki Milner as Lilly and junior Peter Winfrey as Camden.

Also featured are sophomore Sarah Palay as Aurelia and senior Marissa Barnathan as Layla. Rounding out the cast is Max Rissman as the Mayor.

Set design is by Robert Morgan, senior lecturer in drama. Costumes are by Bonnie Kruger, professor of the practice in drama. Lighting and sound are by Sean Savoie, production manager and lecturer in the PAD, and guest designer Matthew Koch, respectively.

Choreography is by David Marchant, professor of the practice in the PAD’s Dance Program. Sarah Wagener is dramaturg. Emily Frei is prop master.

Tickets and showtimes

Performances of Camden & Lilly begin at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 29, 30 and 31, and at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 31 and April 1.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for students, seniors and WUSTL faculty and staff. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office and all MetroTix outlets. The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

Michael Van Valkenburgh to speak March 19

Liam Otten — 2012-03-12 00:00:00

Plans for redesigning the Gateway Arch grounds, led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, would transform downtown's Mississippi riverfront into a cobblestone promenade. Van Valkenburgh will discuss the firm's work March 19 for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Image courtesy of MVVA.

“The goal of our work is to create parks that are intrinsically urban — not places to escape from the city, but places to escape within the city.”

So observes landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), in a recent interview with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

It’s an idea that informs many of MVVA’s projects, from the recently opened Pier One in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park to the firm’s current proposals for the 91-acre park surrounding St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch.

At 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 19, Van Valkenburgh will discuss MVVA’s work as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring Public Lecture Series.

The talk is free and open to the public and will take place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. A reception for Van Valkenburgh will precede the lecture, at 6 p.m.

For more information, call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

MVVA won the Arch grounds commission in fall 2010, following a 10-month architectural competition that drew 49 proposals from firms around the world. Organized by The CityArchRiver Foundation, the project is estimated to cost more than $500 million and to be largely constructed by Oct. 28, 2015 — the 50th anniversary of the original completion of the Arch.

MVVA’s design encompasses a number of strategies for better integrating both the Arch grounds and the Mississippi riverfront into the life of downtown St. Louis. Major elements include:

building a pedestrian land bridge over the depressed lanes of Interstate 70;
redeveloping Kiener Plaza as a link between the Arch, the Old Courthouse and Citygarden;
expanding and adding a new glass-and-steel entrance to the Arch museum;
rebuilding Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard, which runs alongside the Mississippi, as a cobblestone promenade;
slinging a gondola across the river to the Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park on the Illinois bank; and
restoring approximately 100 acres of wetlands in the Metro East.

In addition to his work with MVVA, Van Valkenburgh is the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, where he teaches landscape design as well as the use of plants as design material.

A fellow of the ASLA, Van Valkenburgh’s numerous honors include the National Design Award in Environmental Design from the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture for contributions to the practice of architecture as an art.

In 2010, MVVA's design for Brooklyn Bridge Park was awarded the prestigious Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Art Society of New York, which recognizes works of art that best exemplify and contribute to the vibrant life of New York City.

Kathryn Dean installed as the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture

2012-03-07 00:00:00

Mary Butkus

Dean receives congratulations from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton after her installation as the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture.

Kathryn A. Dean, director of the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design and professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, was installed as the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture. The ceremony was held Dec. 2, 2011, in Steinberg Auditorium.

Among the special guests were alumna Corinna Cotsen and her husband, Lee Rosenbaum, who established the professorship in memory of Cotsen’s mother; members of the Cotsen and Rosenbaum families; Corinna’s friends and fellow alumni; and Dean’s daughters, nieces, sisters and professional colleagues.

In his welcoming remarks, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton thanked the donors and reflected on the gift’s importance.

“Your generous gift will impact the world of architecture now and well into the future, for this professorship ensures that the school continues to attract and retain the most outstanding scholars and professional architects at Washington University,” Wrighton said.

Stolaroff Cotsen attended Washington University’s School of Art, now the Sam Fox School’s College of Art, but earned her undergraduate degree from the Parsons School of Design in New York.

After settling down in Los Angeles, Stolaroff Cotsen became a patron of the arts. Among her lasting contributions was co-founding the Los Angeles Friends of the Junior Arts Center, a public teaching center open to all children interested in art. She also volunteered as a docent for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Corinna Cotsen chose Washington University for her graduate education and earned two master’s degrees, in architecture and in construction management, from the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering & Applied Science, respectively.

After graduating, she founded the Edifice Complex, a LEED-certified design and engineering firm based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., which specializes in creating sustainable living spaces within built environments.

Rosenbaum, who specializes in entertainment law with the Los Angeles firm Wyman, Isaacs, Blumenthal & Lynne, earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a juris doctorate from Harvard University.

A devoted alumna, Cotsen currently serves on the university’s Board of Trustees. She also has served as chair of the Los Angeles Regional Cabinet and has been on Architecture’s National Council for 15 years. In 2006, she received the Dean’s Medal from the Graduate School of Architecture in honor of her service.

A commitment to WUSTL passed from mother to daughter, and the pattern now is repeating itself: Corinna’s daughter, Chiara, now in her first year at the university, represents the third generation to matriculate here.

In addition to Wrighton, the installation ceremony included remarks by Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts; and Bruce Lindsey, dean of architecture in the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome Corinna and Lee here today to express my deep gratitude for their commitment to the school of architecture,” Colangelo said. “This professorship gives us an extraordinary opportunity to honor both a distinguished faculty member and to honor the memory of JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen.”

“As an outstanding educator and celebrated architect, Kathryn Dean brings to Washington University the experience and passion to help our students become leaders in enriching our cultural, natural and physical environments,” Lindsey said.

Dean came to WUSTL in 2008 and now divides her time between St. Louis and New York, where she and her husband, Charles Wolf, head up Dean/Wolf Architects. Wolf earned his undergraduate degree in architecture from Washington University. Their daughter, Carolyn, is a WUSTL freshman, and she and Chiara Rosenbaum are friends.

Dean earned a bachelor’s degree in 1981 from North Dakota State University and then earned a master’s degree in architecture two years later from the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

In 1986, she was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship and spent the year as a resident fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Other honors include Progressive Architecture’s Young Architects Award; an Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York; and an Alumni Achievement Award from North Dakota State University.

Dean began teaching in 1991 as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. In 1998, she was a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University, and, in 2000, she returned to Columbia as an assistant professor. She also has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, University of Virginia and University of Florida.

Since its inception in 1991, Dean/Wolf Architects has garnered a national reputation for its innovative designs in contemporary residential architecture. Many of the firm’s major projects have been recognized by the American Institute of Architects and have been widely praised for turning architectural constraints into powerful generators of form. One of its hallmarks is a novel manipulation of light and space.

The company’s work has been featured in several exhibitions and in more than a dozen books, including Forty Under Forty and The New City Home. Last year, the monograph Dean/Wolf Architects: Construction Continuum was published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Interview with Wang Shu

2012-03-07 00:00:00

http://youtu.be/WM71gG8tCXo

On Feb. 27, 2012, just two days before lecturing at Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Wang Shu became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, generally considered the profession's highest honor.

Here he discusses his work with architectural historians Robert McCarter, the Sam Fox School's Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture, and Seng Kuan, assistant professor of architecture. The talk takes place in the university's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, designed by Fumihiko Maki, Wang's fellow Pritzker laureate.

Robert Bruegmann to speak March 7

2012-03-06 00:00:00

From The Architecture of Harry Weese (2010) by architectural historian Robert Bruegmann, who will speak for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts March 7.

In a career spanning half a century, Chicago architect Harry Weese (1915-98) produced a large number of significant designs, ranging from small but highly inventive residences to large-scale urban commissions such as the Washington, D.C., Metro system.

In Missouri, Weese is probably best known for the campus of St. Louis’ Forest Park Community College and the WallStreet Tower (formerly Mercantile Bank) in Kansas City.

In The Architecture of Harry Weese (2010), critic and historian Robert Bruegmann reexamines Weese’s protean career and legacy, part of a fast-growing revival of interest in the work of Weese and other second-generation modernists such as Eero Saarinen, Edward Larrabee Barnes, I. M. Pei, Ralph Rapson and Paul Rudolph.

Bruegmann, a University Distinguished Professor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is also the author of Sprawl: A Compact History (2005) — the first major book to challenge urban sprawl’s pejorative connotations — and The Architects and the City: Holabird and Roche of Chicago 1880-1918 (1997), which traces the history of one of Chicago’s most influential firms.

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 7, Bruegmann will speak for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring Public Lecture Series.

The talk — the school’s annual AIA St. Louis Scholarship Trust Lecture — will take place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. A reception for Bruegmann will precede the lecture, at 6 p.m.

For more information, call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

Bruegmann earned a bachelor’s degree from Principia College in 1970 and his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, writing his dissertation on late 18th- and early 19th-century European hospitals and other institutions.

In 1977, Bruegmann became assistant professor in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of the Arts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He also has worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service.

Bruegmann’s fields of research and teaching are architectural, urban, landscape and planning history and historic preservation. He has received scholarships and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Graham Foundation; the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University; and the Institute for the Humanities and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Other books include Modernism at Mid-Century: The Architecture of the United States Air Force Academy (editor, 1994), Holabird & Roche/Holabird & Root, Catalog of Work 1910-1940 (1991), A Guide to 150 Years of Chicago Architecture (1985) and Benicia: Portrait of an Early California Town: An Architectural History (1980).

Architecture’s highest honor

2012-03-02 00:00:00

jerry naunheim jr. (2)

“Someone at Washington University in St. Louis just hit the lecture jackpot.” So quipped Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune’s influential architecture critic. On Feb. 27, just two days before his scheduled talk for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, architect Wang Shu (above, center) became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, generally considered the profession’s highest honor. On Feb. 29, Wang met with students, faculty and well-wishers at a reception in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (above) and then spoke before a capacity crowd in Steinberg Hall Auditorium (below). Fittingly, Wang delivered the Sam Fox School’s annual Fumihiko Maki Lecture, named for former WUSTL faculty member and Wang's fellow Pritzker laureateFumihiko Maki, who designed the Kemper Art Museum and Steinberg Hall.

Art and the Mind-Brain talk March 7

2012-03-02 00:00:00

Mark Rollins, PhD, professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, discusses Art and the Mind-Brain, on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, with the Women and the Kemper friends group Feb. 6. Rollins will present a free public talk about the exhibition, which he curated, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 7. Photo by Mike Venso/Kemper Art Museum.

Art may be subjective, but it is not entirely so. Aesthetic interest also can be understood in terms of a work’s power to engage cognitive and perceptual systems common to all human brains.

Roy Lichtenstein, Crying Girl, 1963. Offset lithograph, 18 x 24". Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. Gift of Mrs. Joseph L. Tucker, 1965.

This is the central premise of neuroaesthetics, an emerging field that draws on neuroscience, psychology and philosophy to explore questions relating to beauty, artistic expression and art history.

It is also the premise behind Art and the Mind-Brain, now on view in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s Teaching Gallery.

Curated by Mark Rollins, PhD, professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, the exhibition employs works from the museum’s permanent collection — by Joseph Albers, Romare Bearden, Georges Braque, Tom Friedman, Naum Gabo, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Rembrandt van Rijn and others — to illustrate different, and sometimes competing, theories of pictorial representation.

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 7, Rollins will present a free public talk about Art and the Mind-Brain in the museum's room 104.

“The oldest and most intuitive theory of pictorial representation holds that, unlike words, pictures represent objects by resembling them,” says Rollins, who organized the show in conjunction with a class of the same title. “According to this view, Roy Lichtenstein’s lithograph Crying Girl (1963) represents a crying girl only if we experience it perceptually much as we would a real girl crying (as we seem, in fact, to do).

“The problem is that, in many cases, the experience of the picture and its object are really very different,” Rollins says. “Our experience of Georges Braque’s Still Life with Glass (1930) is not very much like that of a glass on a table, yet the painting pictorially represents a glass on a table nonetheless.”

Thus, a second theory notes that viewers experience a picture’s content and design simultaneously — a twofold-ness possibly rooted in the division between the brain’s ventral and dorsal systems. A third theory holds that the brain recognizes what a picture represents by activating the same unconscious structures engaged by the object itself. For example, though characterized by very different artistic styles, Crying Girl and Joan Miró’s Portrait of Josep F. Ràfols (1917) both may activate some form of neural face recognition module.

Other neuroaesthetic theories speak to the mechanisms by which, for example, small involuntary eye movements may create an illusory sense of movement, or the ways in which mirror neurons influence the expression of emotion.

“This discussion of representation and expression suggests how cognitive science might provide new answers to other controversial questions,” Rollins says. “How, for example, do we interpret art, or ascribe larger meanings to it beyond simply recognizing the objects that may be represented or the emotions that may be expressed? What is the relevance of the artist’s intentions in that regard?

“By offering an opportunity to apply recent research in science to questions such as these, the works in Art and the Mind-Brain open the door to new conversation about the nature and power of art.”

Art and the Mind-Brain remains on view through April 16. The Kemper Art Museum is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.

For more information about the talk or the exhibition, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

In addition, the museum now is accepting proposals from faculty across the university for future Teaching Gallery exhibitions. For more information, and an archive of previous shows, visit the Teaching Gallery webpage; or contact Allison Taylor, manager of education programs, at (314) 935-7918 or Allison.taylor@wustl.edu.

Media advisory: Wang Shu

2012-02-29 00:00:00

The Ningbo History Museum, in Ningbo, China, designed by 2012 Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu. Photo by Lv Hengzhong.

WHO: Chinese architect Wang Shu. On Monday, Feb. 27, Wang became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, widely considered the field’s highest honor, equivalent to the Nobel.

WHAT: Visiting Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

WHERE: Intersection of Forsyth and Skinker Boulevard.

WHEN: Wang will be on campus throughout the day Wednesday and Thursday. To arrange an interview, call Liam Otten at 314-935-8494 (office); 314-324-2076 (cell) or email liam_otten@wustl.edu.

MEDIA AVAILABILITY: Wang and Peter MacKeith, associate dean of the Sam Fox School.

BACKGROUND: Wang Shu has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, making him the first Chinese citizen to receive what is generally considered architecture’s highest honor.

Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 prize, made the announcement Monday, Feb. 27. Two days later, students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will be among the first to congratulate Wang, when the architect visits the Sam Fox School Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 29 and March 1.

“This is a wonderful acknowledgement of the international character of contemporary architecture,” says Peter MacKeith, associate dean of the Sam Fox School and associate professor of architecture, who organizes the lecture series.

MacKeith notes that, as China has grown increasingly urbanized, Chinese architects have found increasing prominence on the world stage. “Our Chinese students are really excited by this news,” MacKeith adds. “It is a great honor that they all share in.”

While on campus, Wang will lecture about his work, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, in Steinberg Auditorium. That event is open to the public, but filming is prohibited.

Wang Shu, 2012 Pritzker Prize winner, Feb. 29

2012-02-27 00:00:00

Archictect Wang Shu's design for the Ningbo History Museum in Ningbo, China.Shu, winner of the 2012 Pritzker Prize, will speak for the Sam Fox School Feb. 29. Photo by Lv Hengzhong.

Wang Shu has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, making him the first Chinese citizen to receive what is generally considered architecture’s highest honor.

Wang Shu.  Photo by Zhu Chenzhou.

Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 prize, made the announcement Monday, Feb. 27. Two days later, students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will be among the first to congratulate Wang when the architect discusses his work as part of the Sam Fox School’s spring Public Lecture Series.

The talk is free and open to the public and will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 29, in Steinberg Auditorium. Seating is limited. A reception will precede the talk, at 5:30 p.m., in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

For more information, call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

MacKeith notes that, as China has grown increasingly urbanized, Chinese architects have gained increasing prominence on the world stage. “It’s a quality that’s reflected in the international character of the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, as well as in the university's own ambitions.”

"Our Chinese students are really excited by this news," MacKeith adds. "It is a great honor that they all share in."

Wang is principal of Amateur Architecture Studio, which he founded in Hangzhou in 1997 with his wife, Lu Wenyu. Though formally spare and rigorous, the firm’s work frequently incorporates elements of local craftsmanship while alluding to regional practices and characteristics.

For example, Wang’s design for Xingshan Campus of the China Academy of Art (completed in two phases, in 2004 and ’07) included more than two million roof tiles salvaged from demolished traditional houses. Similarly, his design for the Library of Wenzheng College at Suzhou University (2000) sited nearly half the building underground, in accordance with local gardening customs, which suggest that structures located between water and the mountains should not be prominent.

Ceramic House, 2003-2006, Jinhua, China. Photo by Lv Hengzhong.

Other major projects include the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum (2005) and the Ningbo Historic Museum (2008) as well as a pair of projects in Hangzhou: the Vertical Courtyard Apartments (2008), which consists of six 26-story towers, and the Exhibition Hall of the Imperial Street of Southern Song Dynasty (2009).

"The question of the proper relation of present to past is particularly timely, for the recent process of urbanization in China invites debate as to whether architecture should be anchored in tradition or should look only toward the future,” the Pritzker jury noted in its citation. “As with any great architecture, Wang Shu’s work is able to transcend that debate, producing an architecture that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.”

Perhaps fittingly, Wang will deliver the Sam Fox School’s 2012 Fumihiko Maki Lecture. Maki, winner of the 1993 Pritzker Prize, was on faculty from 1956-63 and is architect of three campus buildings: Steinberg Hall, Walker Hall and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Other Pritzker laureates associated with the university include Austrailian architect Glenn Murcutt, who won in 2002, while serving as the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture; Hans Hollein of Vienna, who taught here in 1963-64, won in 1985; and Gottfried Boehm of Cologne, Germany, the 1986 laureate, who was a visiting professor in 1998.

Both Murcutt and Juhani Pallasmaa, a former Raymond E. Maritz Visiting Professor of Architecture, currently serve on the Pritzker Jury.

WUSTL Wind Ensemble in concert Feb. 28

2012-02-24 00:00:00

The Washington University Wind Ensemble, under new director Vu Nguyen, will perform a free concert in the 560 Music Center Feb. 28.

Vu Nguyen, who joined the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences last fall as director of winds, will conduct the WUSTL Wind Ensemble in a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28.

“We are very pleased that Vu Nguyen has joined our musical community,” says Dolores Pesce, PhD, the Avis Blewett Professor of Music and chair of the music department. “In his brief time here, he has already revitalized our wind program by setting up a large wind ensemble that draws in talented students.”

The performance will open with selections from The Danserye by Renaissance composer Tielman Susato (c.1510-1570), as arranged by Patrick Dunnigan. Next, the Wind Ensemble will present Contre Qui, Rose by Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943), as arranged by H. Robert Reynolds.

The program will continue with selections from The Bach Buch, featuring Carter Pann’s recent transcriptions of works by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750); and Kaddish, a choral work by W. Francis McBeth (1933-2012), based on the chant of the traditional Jewish prayer.

Concluding the program will be Chester, William Schuman’s (1910-1992) reworking of the popular American Revolutionary War marching song by William Billings.

The performance will take place in the Ballroom Theatre of the 560 Music Center, located in University City at 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard.

For more information, call (314) 935-4161 or email pat@wustl.edu.

Nguyen holds a Master of Music in instrumental conducting from the University of Oregon, where he was a graduate teaching fellow, and a Bachelor of Music in music education from the University of the Pacific. He currently is completing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Washington, where he was the graduate teaching assistant for the wind band program.

In addition to his WUSTL appointment, Nguyen is a captain and commander/conductor of the Air National Guard Band of the West Coast. Stationed at Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., the ANG Band is responsible for providing public concerts and musical support throughout Northern California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Nguyen received his commission from the Academy of Military Science and finished as a distinguished graduate.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Nguyen previously taught public school in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. He has conducted throughout the western United States and in Japan and maintains an active schedule as a clinician and guest conductor.

Lucy Ferriss reads for Writing Program March 6

2012-02-23 00:00:00

The Lost Daughter, the sixth and most recent novel by St. Louis native Lucy Ferriss, opens with a harrowing prologue. Teenagers Brooke and Alex, high school sweethearts, panicked by an accidental pregnancy, rent a hotel room to deliver their stillborn child, leaving its body in a dumpster.

Lucy Ferriss will read from her work March 6.

Fifteen years later, Brooke is happily married, proud mother to a young daughter. But when Alex — recently divorced and mourning the death of his son — resurfaces, it triggers a series of revelations that threaten to undo Brooke’s carefully constructed life.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, Ferris — a writer-in-residence at Trinity College in Hartford — will read from her work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences’ spring Reading Series.

The talk is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

“The Lost Daughter began with headlines,” Ferriss writes on her website. “Police had been finding the tiny remains of unwanted babies in dumpsters and restrooms. This wasn't news. What was news was that the parents turned out to be middle-class white teenagers. How could this have happened? the reporters wanted to know.

“Well, I thought, I know exactly how it happened. And so, more than a decade ago, I set out to write a depressing story. But along the way, my teenaged characters, never caught, grew up. They kept their guilt buried inside them, carrying it as we all carry the unknown sins of our past, letting those mistakes weigh us down.

“Then, surprisingly, I discovered this: the baby lived. And The Lost Daughter was born.”

Ferriss is the author of nine books, including the novels Against Gravity (1996), The Misconceiver (1997) and Nerves of the Heart (2002), as well as the collection Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories (2001). Her memoir, Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante, was named one of the best books of 2005 by the Riverfront Times.

Current projects include a historical novel, The Woman Who Bought the Sky, and a new novel, tentatively titled Honor.

WUSTL Symphony Orchestra Feb. 24

2012-02-21 00:00:00

Cosima and Richard Wagner. Photo taken May 9, 1872, in Vienna by Fritz Luckhardt. Originally published in The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 by Rupert Hughes, 1904.

On Dec. 25, 1870, Cosima Wagner awoke to the sound of music.

Her husband, the composer Richard Wagner, had risen early and arranged a 15-piece orchestra on the stairs of their house in Tribschen, Switzerland. Under Richard’s baton, the strings began softly but soon gained force. Richard’s friend Hans Richter, himself an illustrious conductor, performed on trumpet.

“It grew ever louder,” Cosima wrote in her diary. “I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music!”

As the final notes faded, Richard entered the bedroom and handed the score to his wife. It was the first performance of the Siegfried Idyll, which Wagner had written to mark Cosima’s 33rd birthday (actually Dec. 24, but which she celebrated on Christmas).

Titled for the couple’s infant son, the Siegfried Idyll would become one of Wagner’s best-loved compositions, moving from that Tribschen staircase to concert halls and opera houses around the world.

At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24, the Washington University Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ward Stare will perform the Siegfried Idyll, along with Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, in Washington University's E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

Sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, the performance is free and open to the public. The E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall is located in the 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard.

For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email daniels@wustl.edu.

If the Siegfried Idyll was born of joy, Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 was born of despair — specifically, the disastrous reception to his first symphony, which premiered in 1897 and which the composer later called “the most agonizing hour of my life.”

Confidence shattered, Rachmaninov found himself unable to write and descended into a years-long depression. But in 1900, after months of work with Moscow therapist Nikolai Dahl, the composer began composing again. And with great success — the next five years would see the completion of his beloved Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor as well as two operas, a cello sonata and other works.

In 1906, to escape his newfound celebrity, Rachmaninov moved, with his wife and daughter, to Dresden and quietly began work — at last! — on a new symphony.

The result was Symphony No. 2, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1908, under Rachmaninov’s own baton. Lushly romantic and ambitiously scaled, it proved both a popular and critical vindication, firmly establishing the composer’s international reputation.

Peter Gizzi to read for Writing Program Feb. 23

2012-02-17 00:00:00

Peter Gizzi, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Poetry, will read from his work Thursday, Feb. 23, for The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series.

In my father’s house I killed a cricket with an old sole. Funny how
being dead troubles the word. I am trying to untie this sentence,
to untidy the rooms where we live. No words in the soup, no soup
in this sky, no more history written onto onionskin, peeling
onion skins.
—from “Pinocchio’s Gnosis”

Peter Gizzi’s poetry practically vibrates with tensions — between the lyrical and the abstract, joy and grief, interior and exterior.

In Threshold Songs, his fifth and most recent collection, Gizzi is at once elegiac and experimental, building poems and shaping meanings from the rhythms and collisions of words and language even as he mourns a string of personal losses.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, Gizzi — the Visiting Hurst Professor of Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis — will read from his work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences’ spring Reading Series.

The talk is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle. A reception and book signing will immediately follow. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

Born in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1959, Gizzi earned degrees from New York University, Brown University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is on faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

In addition to Threshold Songs, Gizzi is author of The Outernationale, Some Values of Landscape and Weather, Artificial Heart and Periplum and other poems 1987-92, as well as several limited-edition chapbooks, folios and artist books.

Craig Morgan Teicher, writing in Bookforum, notes that for Gizzi, poetry “represents an interior struggle between the need to disclose emotion with words and the need to hide it behind words.”

“Gizzi is heir to Emily Dickinson’s occult friendliness, her easy rapport across the ‘threshold’ of the grave,” adds Dan Chiasson in a recent New Yorker review. “Gizzi is 52 and a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, but he has held on to the appealing air of the working-class kid growing up in Pittsfield, doing menial jobs and listening to his older brothers’ records.

“He is a lunch-pail mystic, attuned not only to ‘the fundamental shape of awe’ but to its real-world manifestations in ‘dusty antlers, pilsner flattened.’”

1-2-3 improvise!

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:53:43 CST

David kilper (2)

Dance students in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences get things moving Feb. 6, as part of an advanced master class led by acclaimed improvisational dancer Kirstie Simson (below). Described as “a force of nature” by The New York Times, Simson was on campus as the PAD’s 2012 Marcus Residency Dance Artist. Currently on faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Simson has led workshops on improvisation around the world, most recently for Scottish Dance Theater; Sasha Waltz & Guests, Germany; and Cloud Gate Theater Company, Taiwan.

Ptah Williams performs music of Herbie Hancock

2012-02-16 00:00:00

Herbie Hancock is arguably the most influential jazz pianist of the last 50 years. At 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, Washington University’s Jazz at Holmes series will pay tribute to Hancock with an evening of his music performed by St. Louis’ own Ptah Williams.

“Ptah is a talented, gifted pianist and improviser — a fully formed jazz musician,” says William Lenihan, director of jazz studies in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, who organizes the series’ lineup.

Click here for a video history of Jazz at Holmes.

Lenihan notes that Williams — who has worked with major artists such as Lou Donaldson and Fontella Bass — traces his musical roots to figures like Art Tatum, Bill Evans and, of course, Hancock, whose “language, flexibility and adaptation to the ever-changing idioms of jazz and improvised music have given him a longevity comparable only to that of Miles Davis.”

The series will continue the following week, at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 1, with songs of George Gershwin, performed by two WUSTL alumni — guitarist Steve Schenkel, PhD, and pianist Kim Portnoy. Now mainstays of the St. Louis jazz scene, Schenkel, who earned a doctorate in music theory, and Portnoy, who holds a master’s degree in music composition, are both currently on faculty at Webster University.

Subsequent concerts will include original works by tenor saxophonist Paul DeMarinis, director of jazz studies at Webster (March 22); the Vince Varvel Quartet, led by the eponymous guitarist, a teacher of applied music at WUSTL (April 5); and a to-be-determined guest artist, co-sponsored by campus radio station KWUR-FM (April 12).

In addition, on March 29, Jazz at Holmes will host a trio of student ensembles from the Department of Music’s Jazz Combo Program.

“Students participating in the jazz performance program play in small groups, learning historical jazz practices,” Lenihan says. “They learn to analyze improvisations of master jazz musicians and to re-create the various styles. Students are then encouraged to find their own voice as improviser, developing their own tendencies in vocabulary and language.

“Perhaps most importantly,” Lenihan says, “these young musicians learn to play together, to find a common expressive ground, to lead, and to communicate closely.”

Performers will include Paul Antion, Elise Cramer and Adam Schefkind on alto sax; Tim Greer on tenor sax; trombonist Andrew Stober; Ben Kramer on bass; and pianists Micha Gordon, Crawford King, Brian Lynch and Jeff Stephens.

All Jazz at Holmes concerts are free and open to the public and take place from 8 to 10 p.m. in Holmes Lounge, located in Ridgley Hall, on the west side of Brookings Quadrangle.

Jazz at Holmes is sponsored by Washington University’s College of Arts & Sciences; Student Union; Congress of the South 40; Department of Music; University College and Summer School; Campus Life; Danforth University Center and Event Management; Community Service Office; Office of Student Involvement and Leadership; Greek Life Office; and Office of Residential Life.

For more information, call (314) 862-0874; visit ucollege.wustl.edu/jazz; friend Jazz at Holmes on Facebook; or email staylor@wustl.edu.

Ballet Hispanico at Edison March 2 and 3

2012-02-16 00:00:00

Ballet Hispanico returns to Edison March 2 and 3 with an evening of new and recent works. Pictured is Mad'moiselle, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Hi-res image available upon request.

“Maria.”

In Latin cultures, it is the iconic female name — embracing sacred and profane, encompassing women from Maria Magdalena to the Virgin Maria to the romantic lead in West Side Story.

It also is the inspiration for Mad’moiselle, a richly theatrical and frequently tongue-in-cheek examination of the Marias in all our lives.

Next month, Ballet Hispanico, the nation’s preeminent Latino dance organization, will present Mad’moiselle and other recent works as part of the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University.

Performances will begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 2 and 3. Tickets are $35, or $30 seniors, $25 for Washington University faculty and staff and $20 for students and children.

In addition, at 11 a.m. Saturday, Ballet Hispanico will present a special matinee performance of ¡Viajes!, an all-ages exploration of Latin American and Caribbean dance forms, as part of Edison’s ovations for young people series. Tickets are $12 flat.

Tickets to both Ovations and ovations for young people shows are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543, email edison@wustl.edu or visit edison.wustl.edu.

In conjunction with the performances, Edison also will host Algo Nuevo (“Something New”), a series of free activities exploring the history and aesthetics of Hispanic dance and traditional costuming. The series is funded by a $10,000 Challenge America Fast-Track Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For details and schedule, contact Ann Rothery at (314) 935-3389 or arothery@wustl.edu.

Program

The program will open with Mad’moiselle, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Commissioned in 2010, this piece for 11 dancers explores Latin American gender identities and male/female images, interspersed with witty, and occasionally pointed, references to Heaven, Hell, the Garden of Eden and even surrealist painting.

The accompanying soundscape, by Bart Rijnink, collages songs and samples relating to various Marias, from Charles Gounod’s Ave Maria to four versions of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story ballad to voice excerpts of Bernstein and opera star José Carrera.

The program will continue with Espiritu Vivo, a new collaboration between Ballet Hispanico and Brooklyn-based choreographer Ronald K. Brown, which debuted earlier this year.

Set to music by legendary Peruvian singer Susana Baca, this piece for eight dancers examines the intersection of the African and Latino diasporas in the Caribbean and Latin America. Employing both dance forms and narrative traditions drawn from across those regions, Espiritu Vivo unfolds in four sections based on the stages of grief: The News, Prayer, Spring and New Day.

Concluding the program will be Asuka, an homage to Salsa legend Celia Cruz. The piece, which premiered last December, is choreographed by artistic director Eduard Vilaro and represents Vilaro’s first new work for the company since taking the helm in 2009.

Cruz, who was known around the world as the “Queen of Salsa,” came of age amidst the diverse musical climate of 1930’s Cuba and in many ways personifies the evolution of salsa, from its roots in African rhythms to its emergence as a contemporary genre in the United States. (The title is a reference to Cruz’s famous catch phrase, “Azúcar!” or “Sugar!”) Over the years, her 23 gold albums inspired countless immigrants, providing comfort and solace to those seeking shelter on foreign shores.

The New York Post praises Mad'moiselle, “a smart, spicy piece of dance theater,” while The (New Jersey) Star-Ledger says that, “This dance company can wake up the neighborhood with a sudden, brassy shout or it can croon softly in your ear, whispering words of love.”

The Washington Post says that, “Ballet Hispanico dances with elegance and lyricism,” adding that the company’s “graceful phrases look effortless. Audiences will return to see Ballet Hispanico for its enduring graciousness.”

Ballet Hispanico

Ballet Hispanico was founded in New York in 1970 by Tina Ramirez. The daughter of a Mexican bullfighter and grandniece of a Puerto Rican educator, Ramirez was born in Venezuela and came to the United States at age 7, studying with Lola Bravo, New York’s grande dame of Spanish dance, and noted ballet teachers Alexandra Danilova and Anna Sokolow.

As a professional dancer, Ramirez toured with the Federico Rey Dance Company but, in 1963, returned to New York to fulfill a promise to take over the retiring Bravo’s studio. In 1967, Ramirez created Operation High Hopes, a professional dance-training program for inner-city children, which led, three years later, to the establishment of Ballet Hispanico.

Vilaro was born in Cuba and arrived in New York at the age of 6. He began his dance training as a teenager on scholarship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and joined Ballet Hispanico as a dancer in 1985, performing works by Vicente Nebrada, Talley Beatty, Ramon Oller and other. He returned to the company in 2009, after 10 years with Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago, which he founded and directed.

In addition to the professional company’s extensive touring, the Ballet Hispanico School of Dance offers year-round professional training in ballet, Spanish dance and modern for more than 600 students. School alumni, who include Jennifer Lopez, have gone on to careers in theater, television and film as well as dance.

Edison Theatre

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors. The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

The President and the Assassin Feb. 20

2012-02-14 00:00:00

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Scott Miller, author of The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century, will discuss McKinley’s presidency and assassination Feb. 20. Drawing by T. Dart Walker, 1905.

Despite war, terrorism and international expansion during his presidency, William McKinley is frequently overshadowed by his charismatic successor, Theodore Roosevelt. Yet McKinley’s presidency was arguably the more action-packed, with lasting implications for American power and its role in the world.

So argues Scott Miller, author of The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century (2011). At 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20, Miller will discuss McKinley and his legacy for the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The talk — the center’s third annual Presidents' Day Lecture — is titled “William McKinley, His Assassin and the Emergence of the U.S. as a Global Power.” It will take place in the Formal Lounge of the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building. The event is free and open to the public.

The Women’s Building is located a short walk north of Olin Library. For more information or to request a parking sticker, call (314) 935-5576 or email cenhum@artsci.wustl.edu.

A longtime reporter, Miller spent nearly two decades in Asia and Europe as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, covering topics as varied as the Japanese economic collapse, the birth of a single European currency and competitive speed knitting.

The President and the Assassin stems in part from Miller’s researching and writing about global trade. Elected president in 1896, McKinley would face a series of key foreign policy decisions — war with Spain; military intervention in China and Nicaragua; the annexation of Hawaii — that together helped announce the United States’ arrival as a world power.

But in 1901, less than a year into his second term, McKinley was shot dead by Leon Czolgosz, a seething young anarchist and former factory worker, who was outraged by the rapidly changing economic landscape.

In tracing the years leading up to McKinley’s murder, Miller explores the particular histories of the president and his assassin — each pursuing what he considered the right and honorable path — while also crafting a rich narrative portrait of turn-of-the-century America.

“William McKinley’s presidency, and the era it spanned, tends to be forgotten, yet it was in those years that the modern American nation, economy, and presidency were forged,” says Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

“Scott Miller describes these years through the world of McKinley and the man who assassinated him,” Zakaria says. “The result is a marvelous work of history, wonderfully written, told from the top down and the bottom up.”

Calendar Summary

WHO: Author Scott Miller

WHAT: Presidents' Day Lecture, “William McKinley, His Assassin, and the Emergence of the U.S. as a Global Power”

WHEN: 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20

WHERE: Ann W. Olin Women's Building Formal Lounge

COST: Free and open to the public

SPONSOR: Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences

INFORMATION: (314) 935-5576

Music of Schubert, Schumann and Liszt Feb. 21

2012-02-13 00:00:00

Three musicians from the St. Louis Symphony will join baritone Keith Boyer, a master’s candidate in vocal performance at Washington University in St. Louis, and pianist Amanda Kirkpatrick, teacher of applied music in Arts & Sciences, for a free performance at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21.

Sponsored by the Department of Music and the symphony’s Community Partnership Program, the concert will open with two works by Franz Schubert. The symphony’s Alison Harney, principal second violin, and cellist Elizabeth Chung will first join Kirkpatrick for Nocturne in Eb Major, Op. 148 (1827).

Kirkpatrick then will be joined by Boyer and Roger Kaza, the symphony’s principal horn, for Auf dem Strom (“On the River”), Schubert’s 1828 setting of the poem by Ludwig Rellstab.

Next, Chung and Kirkpatrick will present Three Fantasy Pieces for cello and piano, Op. 73 (1849) by Robert Schumann. Kirkpatrick also will perform Franz Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s Widmung (1848) for solo piano, followed by Liszt’s own Elegie No. 1 for cello and piano (1874).

The program will conclude with two works for solo piano from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”): Sonetto 123 del Petrarca and Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, both from the suite Deuxième année: Italie (“Second Year: Italy”) (1837-49).

The performance will take place in the Ballroom Theatre of the 560 Music Center, located in University City at 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard.

For more information, call (314) 935-5566 or email daniels@wustl.edu.

Dala, ‘Girls From the North Country,’ Feb. 18

2012-01-26 00:00:00

Canadian duo Dala, aka Amanda Walther and Sheila Carabine. Download hires image.

Amanda Walther and Sheila Carabine have come a long way in a short time.

Since meeting as high school students in 2002, the two best friends — who perform together as folk-pop duo Dala — have crisscrossed their native Canada, emerging as sharp songwriters and soulful performers in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Tom Cochrane.

Dala. Download hires image.

More recently, the pair has reached wider North American audiences thanks to their PBS special Girls From the North Country and a live album of the same title — Dala’s fifth, but first on a U.S. label.

Next month, Dala will present an intimate evening of folk classics and original songs as part of the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University in St.Louis.

The special one-night-only performance begins at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18. Tickets are $35, or $30 seniors, $25 for Washington University faculty and staff and $20 for students and children.

Tickets are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543, e-mail edison@wustl.edu or visit edison.wustl.edu.

Dala

Walther and Carabine first met in high school jazz band, performing covers by the likes of Frank Sinatra. But one evening, sitting at home as a party began winding down, the pair was inspired to attempt an original work.

“We wrote our first song with the only four chords we knew,” Walther recently told NPR’s Folk Alley. “It was magic. We just had so much fun, it snowballed from there.”

“Over the years we found our voices together,” Carabine said. “I think that because we’re such close friends, the writing process is an extension of the communication that happens anyway.”

Dala. Download hires image.

In 2003, Dala — a name formed by combining the last two letters of each artist’s first name — signed a development deal with Big Bold Sun Music and two years later released its debut album, This Moment Is a Flash.

Within months, their contract was picked up by Universal Music Group (a subsidiary of French media company Vivendi), which released their next three albums — Angels & Thieves (2005), Who Do You Think You Are (2007) and Everyone is Someone (2009) — in Canada.

In support of these recordings — which together collected five Canadian Folk Music Award nominations — Dala has toured extensively throughout Canada, with occasional forays to the United States and United Kingdom. In 2009, they were the only Canadian act invited to The Newport Folk Festival, and also have been featured on Mountain Stage, World Café Live and Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival.

For Girls From the North Country, Dala was joined by other contemporary female singers from Canada, notably The Good Lovelies and Oh Susanna. Interweaving original songs with works by Dylan, Mitchell, Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot, the concert — released as both a CD and DVD — earned Dala a 2010 Canadian Folk Music Award for Vocal Group of the Year and a 2011 Juno Award nomination for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year.

“Dala seem bound for a loftier place where substance stands equal to style,” notes The Irish Times, which named “Everyone Is Someone” its 2009 album of the year. The Bluegrass Special adds that, “Dala writes terrific original songs and approaches its intelligent covers with respect for the originals and an understanding of how to bring a fresh perspective to the time-honored texts of great songwriters.”

“There’s nothing pretentious about Dala’s music; it’s stripped down and laid bare,” says Andrew Craig, host of the CBC’s Canada Live, adding that, “it would be just as at home in a 1960’s coffeehouse as it is now on the contemporary concert stage.”

Edison

Calendar Summary

WHO: Dala

WHAT: Concert

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18

WHERE: Edison Theatre, Washington University, Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

TICKETS: $35; $30 for seniors; $25 for WUSTL faculty and staff; $20 for students and children. Available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and all MetroTix outlets.

SPONSOR: Edison Ovations Series

INFORMATION: (314) 935-6543 or edisontheatre.wustl.edu

Radio Free Emerson Feb. 17-26

Liam Otten — 2012-02-06 00:00:00

(From left) Malcolm Foley as Henry, Sasha Diamond as Gina and Mitch Eagles as Al in the Performing Arts Department production of Radio Free Emerson Feb. 17-28. Photo by David Kilper/WIUSTL Photo Services. Download hires version.

When a beloved radio talk-show host dies, his son highjacks the station’s memorial broadcast to preach an inflammatory reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance.

So begins Radio Free Emerson, a loose adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck by contemporary playwright Paul Grellong. This month, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present Grellong’s witty interrogation of truth and its consequences in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Shows begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 17 and 18, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19. Performances continue the following weekend, at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24 and 25, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26.

In addition, Grellong will participate in a pre-show talk at 7:15 p.m. Feb. 25.

Tickets are $15, or $10 for students, seniors and WUSTL faculty and staff. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office and all MetroTix outlets. The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543.

Radio Free Emerson

Set in Rhode Island in 1999, the story begins with the death of Edward Gregory, a popular Providence broadcaster and self-help guru. His estranged son, Al, has spent the last several years on a lobster boat in Maine, interpreting and evangelizing Self-Reliance to crewmates, but returns home for Edward’s funeral and an on-air farewell.

When his eulogy devolves into a philosophical rant, Al strikes an unexpected spark with listeners and inherits his father’s time slot. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Al’s unvarnished truth-telling provokes dire consequences for those around him — particularly Henry, an old friend and enthusiastic disciple; and Gina, Henry’s wife and Al’s reluctant producer.

“Al preaches an extreme version of Emerson’s ideas,” says Pannill Camp, assistant professor in the PAD. “He encourages callers to defy social conventions, to take liberties with their marriages and personal relationships, and to be guided only by their own consciences.

“Al is absolutely confident in his own worldview,” Camp says. “He doesn’t hesitate to tell other people exactly what they should be doing.”

Camp met Grellong while directing The Wild Duck at Brown University in 1999. (The playwright, then an undergraduate, co-starred as patriarch Hialmer Ekdal.) He notes that, despite updates of setting and century, Grellong’s retelling retains significant “Ibsen DNA.”

“There’s a similar dramatic structure,” Camp says. In both plays, “a young couple in a fundamentally solid relationship is confronted by an external force representing an idealistic philosophy.”

But, he adds, “One of the striking things about Radio Free Emerson is the timely examination of the theme of unrestrained liberty. Emerson’s legacy goes to the core of American individualism and American exceptionalism” — issues particularly freighted during political primary season.

Still, perhaps the thorniest question the play raises is not partisan but interpretive. Does Al get Emerson wrong, or — even more provocatively — does he get Emerson right?

“Al has his own agenda, and his reading of Emerson is terribly reductive,” Camp says. “He also seems obsessed with the idea that people are unhappy because they deny themselves certain liberties, especially in their sexual lives, which is not something that concerned Emerson.

“But on the other hand, Al’s views, and what they say about American politics, do speak to the logical consequences of an extreme philosophy of self-reliance.”

Cast and crew

The cast of 10 is led by junior Mitch Eagles as Al, senior Malcolm Foley as Henry and senior Sasha Diamond as Gina.

Also featured are senior Joanna McNurlen as Marilyn, Al’s mother, and senior Randy Brachman as James, the Gregory family physician.

Sophomore Jack Ritten is Freddie, the station engineer. Junior Eric Gustafson and freshman Clare Mulligan are Chris and Carrie, a young engaged couple. Rounding out the cast are freshman Max Bieber and senior Natalie Callaghan as radio callers.

Set design is by Robert Morgan, senior lecturer in drama. Costumes are by Sallie Durbin, costume shop supervisor. Lighting and sound are by senior Artem Kreimer and sophomore Satcher Hsieh.

Junior Melissa Freilich is fight choreographer. Senior Ashley Henderson is stage manager.

CALENDAR SUMMARY

WHO: Performing Arts Department

WHAT: Radio Free Emerson by Paul Grellong; directed by Pannill Camp

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 17 and 18; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24 and 25; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26

WHERE: A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

COST:$15; $10 for seniors, students and WUSTL faculty and staff. Available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and all MetroTix outlets

INFORMATION: (314) 935-6543

Washington People: Patricia Olynyk

Liam Otten — 2012-02-10 00:00:00

Joe Angeles

Patricia Olynyk (right), director of the Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, and master’s candidate Marie Bannerot McInerney discuss Olynyk's Isomorphic Extension I & II, in Olynyk's Maplewood studio.

Scaphocephalus.

The word refers to a condition in which the shape of the skull is markedly long and narrow. At the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, one of the country’s oldest medical teaching collections, the word is tattooed onto a 19th-century exemplar, neat cursive script fading into aged bone.

“One goes to the museum presumably to find answers,” says Patricia Olynyk, director of the Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. “But none of the questions I have about any of the people whose heads reside in these collections can possibly be answered by looking at the archive.

“The objects generate far more questions than answers,” she says. “Therein lies the irony.”

Over the past several years, Olynyk, the Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art, has developed a series of lightbox photographs that both detail and interrogate the Mutter exhibits. Collectively titled The Archive, they include a handful of skulls as well as antique medical instruments, prosthetic devices, flap anatomies (a kind of anatomical pop-up book) and other objects.

Softly backlit and reproduced larger than life, The Archive feels both clinical and uncanny, as if one were standing before the exhibits themselves — though Olynyk clearly locates the work in the realm of the aesthetic, rather than the strictly documentary. Prosthetic hands fan outward, implying sequential time. Prosthetic legs seem poised to kick. Yellowed skulls, printed on metallic paper, shine as if gold-leafed.

“What makes these collections quintessentially contemporary is that the conditions that put them in the museum, our culture’s preoccupation with difference, remain alive and well today,” Olynyk says.

“There was a time in history when there was little discerning between the person, the ‘monstrous’ and the medical anomaly,” she says. Indeed, such conflations were at the heart of physiognomy, the now-discredited “science” of deducing character traits from outward appearances.

“Yet we are still preoccupied with difference.”

A magical place

Born in Western Canada, Olynyk was raised in Calgary, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. The landscape was majestic but stern. Long winters instilled respect for the elements and a recognition of vulnerability.

“It’s a kind of magical place,” she says, “but you also had the feeling, when in the mountains, that if you took a wrong turn, you might disappear.”

Olynyk drew constantly as a child, and on anything. “Walls, dolls, bodies — you name it.” Her mother, Lily, once phoned a radio show for advice about removing ballpoint ink from her daughter’s skin. By age 9, Olynyk was taking private art lessons, though she also credits her father, Mike, an engineer, with imparting a “proclivity for exactitude.”

After completing her undergraduate studies in visual art, Olynyk spent three years as a preparator at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, working with historical displays and contemporary artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz and Judy Chicago.

While in graduate school at the California College of the Arts, she landed an internship at Oakland’s venerable Magnolia Press, specializing in handmade paper and photographic processes.

That expertise helped secure both a Monbusho Scholarship and a Tokyu Foundation Research Scholarship, allowing her to study Japanese culture at the Osaka National University of Foreign Studies and Japanese contemporary art at Kyoto Seika University.

In Kyoto, Olynyk developed a serious interest in Kendo, a martial art descended from traditional Japanese swordsmanship.

“The training bridges meditation and extreme physical combat,” she says. “It’s amazingly rigorous, but that balance really captured my interest.”

Four years later, with her student visa nearing expiration, Olynyk was a second-degree black belt. One teacher — a champion Kendoist who drilled the Imperial police force — offered to formally adopt her so that she might stay in Japan.

“It was an extraordinary gesture, like none other that I’ve encountered,” Olynyk says, rather wistfully. But long hours in the dojo had been bought at the expense of studio time.

“I realized I had to make a choice.”

Sensing Terrains

Returning to the Bay Area, Olynyk became production manager for feminist performance artist Suzanne Lacy, then strung together a series of part-time teaching appointments. Her own work employed photolithography to layer detailed biological and architectural drawings onto delicate, handmade Japanese papers, which she then laminated onto architectural salvage.

“I was interested in what made the scientific image art,” she says.

Then, in 1999, Olynyk took a tenure-track position at the University of Michigan. As the university prepared to launch a new center for theoretical physics, Olynyk connected with Dante Amidei, a particle physicist who arranged for her to visit Illinois’ famed Fermilab.

Inspired, Olynyk commenced her own investigations into the nature of matter. The result was Particle Paradise, or Lilith Looking for a Particle of Another Charge, a pair of large architectural columns combining images of subatomic particles, reproduced from Fermilab films, with Albrecht Durer’s engraving of Adam and Eve.

That image, not coincidentally, was itself a tribute to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Leon Battista Alberti’s influential treatise on art and science. Adam is based on Alberti’s likeness; Eve is Durer in disguise.

“In the same commemorative spirit, I used Durer’s Eve — really Durer himself — to celebrate Lilith,” she says. “The pillar was retrofitted so that the center part spins. On one side, you see Lilith in her visceral form; on the other side, you see her in particle form.”

Next, Olynyk began juxtaposing photographs of gardens from the Kansai Region of Japan, which are designed to “tickle the senses,” with scanning electron micrographs of sensory organs from mice, insects and other creatures. She soon was invited to develop the series into an exhibition for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C. — a rare honor for any artist.

Three years in the making, Sensing Terrains opened at the NAS in 2006. The installation consisted of 10 tall, narrow prints leading to the rotunda and 16 prints in the rotunda itself. Accompanying the images was a low, humming soundscape, developed with Jukka Nurmela, a Finnish sound engineer, and studio assistant Kathryn Stine.

“I was interested in the phenomenological response,” Olynyk says. “What happens to our sense of ourselves when we’re confronted with a fly eye that’s four feet wide? There’s a visceral response but there’s also a cerebral response.

“The mind struggles to ascertain what it’s looking at.”

A distinct territory

Olynyk arrived at the Sam Fox School in 2007. It was a time of transition, as the Graduate School of Art was moving away from media-specific “silos” to a more interdisciplinary master of visual arts.

“Patricia is an extraordinarily sophisticated and elegant artist whose work embodies the idea and the concrete possibilities of collaboration,” says Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, who helped recruit Olynyk.

“Her prints, photographs and installations visualize concepts about the intersection of art and science,” Colangelo says. “At the same time, as a teacher and administrator, she fosters both the informal culture and the organizational structures required to bring people together.”

To improve connections between the graduate school and the wider WUSTL community, Olynyk recently launched the Creative Research Institute Fellows, a pilot program in which visiting artists and guest faculty share a large, open studio with current master’s candidates.

“We want students to engage the world of ideas,” she says. “Each fellow represents a conceptual territory in which students have expressed interest, and is available for informal feedback.”

The idea is to pitch “conceptual and/or thematic umbrellas, not media umbrellas.”

As if demonstrating the point, Olynyk’s most recent project is Dark Skies, a sprawling architectural installation opening Feb. 22 at UCLA’s Art|Sci Center. Created in collaboration with Sung Ho Kim of Axi:Ome and associate professor of architecture at WUSTL, and alumnus Chris Ottinger (MFA ’11), the piece combines projection, recorded sound and CNC-routed tiles inspired loosely by the concept of biomimicry.

“With this piece, I function as a kind of production designer,” Olynyk says.

The title is an astronomical metaphor, referring to remote places free of hazy city light, but also suggests sailing into dangerous or difficult territory.

“I like the implication of perception that extends deep into time and space, resulting in a kind of clarity of vision and with this, deep insight. The extended view offers the promise of new knowledge.

“The curatorial object carries with it important aesthetic characteristics and conceptual underpinnings,” she says, “but what really interests me is thinking about what the object does. What conversations emerge when you look at it? What discourses attach?

“There’s creativity in engineering, in math, in the planetary sciences,” she says, “but the experience of art is unique and distinct from other kinds of experiences.

“Art-making is its own distinct territory and knowledge base.”

Fast facts about Patricia Olynyk

Education: 1983, diploma of visual art, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary; 1988, master of fine arts degree with distinction, California College of the Arts, Oakland; 1990, diploma, Osaka National University of Foreign Studies; 1990-93, research scholar, Department of Art, Kyoto Seika University
Selected scholarships and fellowships: 2005-06, Wood Fellowship, Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; 2001, Helmut S. Stern Faculty Fellowship, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan; 1991-93, Tokyu Foundation Scholarship, from the Tokyu Foundation, Tokyo; 1989-91, Monbusho Scholarship, from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Tokyo
Selected professional memberships and associations: Art and Science Collaborations Inc., College Art Association, Ecoartnetwork, Inter Society for the Electronic Arts, Leonardo Education Forum and Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

The Water Coolers at Edison Feb. 25

Liam Otten — 2012-02-10 00:00:00

Office satirists The Water Coolers perform for the Edison Ovations Series Feb. 25. Download hires image.

Do you understand what the IT guy is talking about?

Really?

The Water Coolers. Download hires image.

Neither do The Water Coolers. Like a Seinfeld episode set to music, or a Dilbert cartoon sprung to life, this New York-based sketch comedy troupe both celebrates and eviscerates modern corporate culture in all its fast-talking, slow-moving absurdity.

At 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25, The Water Coolers will bring their signature mix of original songs, satirical vignettes and pop culture parodies to the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University in St. Louis.

Tickets are $35, or $30 seniors, $25 for WUSTL faculty and staff, and $20 for students and children. Tickets are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543, e-mail edison@wustl.edu or visit edison.wustl.edu.

The Water Coolers

The Water Coolers were conceived by the husband-and-wife team of Thomas Michael Allen, co-creator of the Off-Broadway hit Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, and Sally Allen, a corporate trainer and former conference planner.

The Water Coolers. Download hires image.

Looking to combine their areas of expertise — comedy, music and business — the couple assembled a crack writing staff from both the theatrical and corporate worlds. Included are professional composers and comedians as well as a top sales manager, a retired CEO and an editor from Smart Money magazine.

The result unites the goofy, improvisational charm of Saturday Night Live with a seasoned executive’s pitiless ear for office bravado. Original songs include the office anthem We Are the Sales Reps and the wistful ballad Nowhere Close to My Quota (set, respectively, to the tunes of We Are the Champions and Somewhere Over the Rainbow).

Other topics range from the perils of air travel (What Are They Doing Way Up In First Class?), to decoding the mysteries of Casual Friday and the happy hour recriminations of Panic Monday.

Though initially presented at professional conferences, sales meetings and other corporate events, The Water Coolers quickly expanded to a successful Off-Broadway show that E! Entertainment's Daily News called “the sleeper hit of the season,” along with a national tour and productions in Chicago, Atlanta and Miami.

“Anyone who suffers through the 9-t0-5 grind … will find plenty to relate to in The Water Coolers,” noted the New York Post, while The New York Times called The Water Coolers “truly funny,” adding that “office life’s loss is show business’ gain!”

“The Water Coolers have got the American workplace nailed,” adds Fred Grandy, a former U.S. congressman and CEO of Goodwill Industries. “The hassles, head-trips, and hook-ups of our modern corporate culture are all captured in songs that are funny, lyrical and dead on.

“Move over, Microsoft. The Water Coolers have a new ‘office suite’ we've got to install.”

Edison Theatre

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors. The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

Calendar Summary

WHO: The Water Coolers

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25

WHERE: Edison Theatre, Washington University, Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

TICKETS: $35; $30 for seniors; $25 for WUSTL faculty and staff; $20 for students and children. Available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and all MetroTix outlets.

SPONSOR: Edison Ovations Series

INFORMATION: (314) 935-6543 or edisontheatre.wustl.edu

Trova collection added to WUSTL Modern Graphic History Library

2012-02-07 00:00:00

The Washington University Libraries have acquired the archives of internationally recognized artist Ernest Trova (1927-2009).

Washington University Libraries

The Trova Family Collection includes numerous adaptations of Falling Man, ranging from two-dimensional versions to small models like the one pictured to six-foot-long casting molds.

Trova’s archives, which will be housed in WUSTL’s Modern Graphic History Library, provide researchers a glimpse into his life and his art-making process.

The Trova Family Collection will be processed and made accessible to researchers and the general public within the next several months, with many of the materials to be digitally accessible as well.

“The collection gives a complete picture of his work,” says Skye Lacerte, curator of the Modern Graphic History Library. “The archival materials document his process, from inspiration, to conception, to planning, to fruition, to its reception, to its evolution into other forms, and finally its impact.”

Of particular interest among the sketches, models, photographs, casting molds, blueprints, correspondence and more that comprise the Trova Family Collection are items linked to Trova’s iconic series of paintings and sculptures known as Falling Man.

The series established the self-taught artist as one of the most highly acclaimed sculptors at work in the 1960s and ’70s, and many of those early fine art works are held by prominent institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York City and the Tate Modern in London.

Washington University Libraries

A piece of the Trova Family Collection.

Trova’s influence on modern graphic history and devotion to St. Louis make his archival collection a fitting addition to the Department of Special Collections’ Modern Graphic History Library, Lacerte says.

During this period of great success in the New York and European art worlds, Trova, a St. Louis native, continued to live in St. Louis and remained closely connected to the community. In 1975, he donated 40 of his sculptures to Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis County, helping to transform what was at the time a little-known park into a popular tourist attraction.

By the 1980s, Trova’s critical acclaim had waned significantly, although his artistic output had not. When Trova left a well-established New York gallery to sign on with an inexperienced art dealer who turned out to be at odds with the artist, Trova’s reputation suffered.

Washington University Libraries

A piece of the Trova Family Collection.

“For more than 20 years, the marketing of Trova’s art has been an impediment to the appreciation of the philosophical acuity that informed his most resonant paintings and sculptures,” writes Matthew Strauss, founder of White Flag Projects in St. Louis, in a recent catalog essay accompanying a survey of the artist’s work.

Trova maintained a deep interest in mass market culture and cartoons throughout his life. One of Trova’s first jobs was at the Famous-Barr department store in downtown St. Louis, where he attended to mannequins as a window dresser — and where his debut Falling Man exhibition was later held, rather than in an art gallery, during St. Louis’ bicentennial celebration in 1964.

“These aspects of Trova are part of why his collection fits within our scope,” Lacerte says. “He was a fine artist; yet he was also fascinated with, for example, Mickey Mouse.”

For more information about the collections housed at the Modern Graphic History Library, visit library.wustl.edu/units/spec/MGHL or call (314) 935-7741.

In a space next door to the West Campus Library (where the Modern Graphic History Library is located), a selection of Trova’s original artwork will be on display and for sale by the Ivey-Selkirk company.

Called the Trova Project @ Ivey-Selkirk, the space will open Monday, Feb. 13. The gallery entrance is located immediately to the right of the Ivey-Selkirk space (7447 Forsyth Blvd.). Hours are 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For more information, contact Mark Howald at (314) 726-5515.

About Washington University Libraries

The Washington University Libraries’ 12 libraries (10 on the main Danforth Campus, one at the Medical School and one at West Campus) house 4.5 million books and periodical volumes.

Among the Libraries’ many strengths is a collection of contemporary German literature unparalleled anywhere outside Germany; extensive holdings in vernacular Chinese literature and history; and exceptional special collections in modern literary manuscripts, rare books, documentary film and 20th-century illustration.

Cashore Marionettes at Edison Feb. 11

2012-02-02 00:00:00

Cashore Marionettes will perform for Edison's ovations for young people series Feb. 11. Photo by Matt Cashore. Hires image available upon request.

Puppets and marionettes are among the world’s oldest entertainments.

Though today associated with humorous children’s programming, they are equally capable of evoking the tender and moving. Indeed, the word “marionette,” which arose during the Middle Ages, is thought to derive from “Mary,” a reference to popular nativity plays.

This month, master puppeteer Joseph Cashore and his Cashore Marionettes will present Simple Gifts, a series of quiet, everyday vignettes set to classical music, as part of Edison Theatre’s ovations for young people series at Washington University in St. Louis.

Tickets to the performance, which will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, are $12 and are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543 or email edison@wustl.edu.

Cashore Marionettes

An accomplished artist as well as puppeteer, Cashore built his first marionette at age 11, from clothespins, wood string and a tin can.

His second marionette came years later, after graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor of fine arts degree. Attempting to recapture his youthful sense of movement and life, Cashore quickly realized that the fluid motions he sought would require devising unique control designs.

Over the next 19 years, while also pursuing a career in oil painting, Cashore developed totally new control mechanisms and continued to experiment with the construction of his marionettes, their clothing and props. He began performing full-time in 1990 and has since appeared across North America, Europe and Asia.

In Simple Gifts, his latest show, Cashore enacts a series of original vignettes drawn from everyday life. Set to music of Vivaldi, Strauss, Beethoven and Copland, these touching, poignant and sometimes humorous scenes unfold with a dazzling combination of virtuoso manipulation, theatrical illusion and artistic insight, providing audiences with an entertaining and sensitive vision of what it means to be human.

The Calgary Herald praised Simple Gifts as a “brilliant production that carries the audience through a range of feelings,” adding that “this show is highly recommended even for adults who don't happen to have kids.”

Cashore’s numerous honors include a Citation of Excellence from the Union Internationale de la Marionnette — the highest honor an American puppeteer can receive — as well as a Henson Foundation Grant to promote puppetry to adult audiences and a Fellowship for Performance Art from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

ovations for young people

The ovations for young people series will continue Saturday, March 3, with Ballet Hispanico in ¡Viajes!, an all-ages exploration of Latin American and Caribbean dance forms.

Concluding the 2011-12 series, on Saturday, May 5, will be Montreal’s Dynamo Theatre with Mur-Mur (The Wall), an acrobatic exploration of friendship and young love.

Edison Ovations Series

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors.

The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.