Author: Liam Otten

With its fractured spaces and multiple viewpoints, Cubism marked a radical break fromWestern painting’s long tradition of naturalistic depiction. But even Cubism had its influences — among them, the visual techniques of early cinema. In February, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and KDHX Media Arts will help contemporary filmmakers return the favor with the Kemper Braque Film Challenge.

At a reading speed of 250 words per minute, it would take the average adult almost three full days (without sleep or bathroom breaks) to complete J.K. Rowling’s mammothly popular Harry Potter series. Now you can do it in 70 minutes flat, thanks to Potted Potter, which comes to Edison Theatre Feb. 15.

The air is crisp and cold but the voices will be rich and warm when Winter Opera St. Louis, the youngest of the area’s three professional companies, visits the Danforth University Center Jan. 29. The free performance will launch the spring Chamber Music Series.

Hillary Sale, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law and professor of management, on governance and diversity in the board room.

Karen K. Butler, assistant curator at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, discusses Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945. The exhibition, which opens Jan. 25, is the first to explore Braque’s work in the years leading up to, and through, World War II.

In Blue Front (2006), poet Martha Collins draws on news accounts and historical documents to depict the brutal, 1909 lynching in Cairo, IL. On Thursday, Jan. 24, Collins, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing in Arts & Sciences, she will present a free public lecture on the craft of poetry.

“The first thing we’re going to do is teach you how to throw a punch,” says senior Melissa Freilich. No, it’s not Boxing 101. Earlier this fall, the Edison Ovations Series welcomed approximately 500 eighth-graders from across St. Louis for a special matinee performance by nationally acclaimed Aquila Theatre.

Collaborative artists Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick have won international acclaim for large-scale photo installations that mix dry wit and subtle narratives with trippy, futuristic surrealism: Rene Magritte meets NASA and Pink Floyd. On Monday, Jan. 28, Kahn and Selesnick—who met as WUSTL photography majors—will discuss their work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts spring Public Lecture Series.

You try doing homework in the dark. For school-aged children across the developing world, access to electrical lighting remains precarious. Enter the Little Sun, a solar-powered lamp designed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Now Little Sun is at the center of two projects involving WUSTL students and faculty, which stretch from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to the villages of Madagascar.

Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present its annual sing-along of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, in Graham Chapel. Nicole Aldrich, director of choral activities, directs the program.