Author: Liam Otten

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling has delighted children for generations. Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare dates back more than 2,500 years old. On March 16, Corbian Visual Arts and Dance (aka Lightwire Theatre) will return to Edison will cutting-edge theatrical adaptation of both classic fables as part of the ovations for young people series.

As a child in New Mexico, Robert Mirabal awoke at dawn and “ran to the sun.” The ritual, a fusion of physical and spiritual discipline, was an important component of daily life in many Native American cultures. Now, that memory has helped inspire Music of the Sun, a collaborative concert between the Grammy Award-winning flutist and the pioneering string quartet Ethel, which comes to the 560 Music Center March 22.

Does art have a moral duty to be politically engaged? On Thursday, March 7, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will explore that question and more with “Committed Culture: A Panel Discussion on Politics and Aesthetics During World War II.”

In architecture and the visual arts, there is a long tradition of site-specific projects and temporary installations informing subsequent development. Now The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have launched PXSTL, a national competition exploring the critical role of the arts and culture in building vital and dynamic communities.

With their intricate textures, subtle surface variations and visible reworkings, Georges Braque’s midcareer paintings demonstrate a profound interest in the painting process and in the possibilities of his materials. Patricia Favero, associate conservator for The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., will discuss Braque’s technique, in conjunction with the exhibition Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-45.

Mike Hayes, WUSTL’s executive director of Campus Life, empowers student leaders and helps to foster “light bulb” moments.

It’s hard to wave when your elbow can’t bend. In Beauty, choreographer Jane Comfort deploys the robotic, stiff-jointed movements of Barbie and Ken dolls to withering satirical effect. On Friday and Saturday, March 1 and 2, Jane Comfort and Company will perform Beauty—as well as the BESSIE Award-winning Underground River — as part of the Edison Ovations Series.

In the early 20th century, utopian conviction about the promise of artistic abstraction was widespread. And yet, in the years between the World Wars, the human figure remained the site of significant artistic activity. So argues John Klein, associate professor of art history and archaeology, in Face and Figure in European Art, 1928-1945, now on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

If the answer to a poem is another poem, the answer to music, clearly, is more music. On Feb. 24, the WUSTL Wind Ensemble will pair music by Charles Gounod and Johann Sebastian Bach with works from two contemporary composers in a free concert titled “The Old and the New.”

Sustainability and economic growth: two desirable goals which should demonstrably complement one another, especially in our cities. But how? On Feb. 21, the Sam Fox School and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will present The Innovative Metropolis, a daylong symposium (and web simulcast) on fostering economic competitiveness through sustainable urban design.