Author: Liam Otten

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 April 12 and 13, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will investigate Midwestern cultural production with Inland Symposium: CST, the third annual Inland Visual Studies Center symposium.

In 1990, the Illinois Humanities Council presented a daylong event on the theme “Expressions of Freedom.” So was born the Chicago Humanities Festival, one of the nation’s premiere celebrations of the liberal arts. Now it’s St. Louis’ turn. On April 13 and 14, WUSTL’s Center for the Humanities — with the Missouri Humanities Council, Webster University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis — will present the first annual St. Louis Humanities Festival. One of the speakers is novelist and Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson.

The Performing Arts Department 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 ten original works created by student choreographers in the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

Philosophy makes little mention of the theater except to denounce it as a place of illusion and moral decay. Theater tends to respond by steering away from philosophy, driven by the notion that theater consists of actions, not ideas. But in The Drama of Ideas, Harvard scholar Martin Puchner, argues that despite this mutual evasion, the histories of philosophy and theater have in fact been crucially intertwined. On April 5, Puchner will present Washington University’s 10th Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture.

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, the Biblical book most explicitly dedicated to the joys of earthly love. On April 1, the Washington University Concert Choir and the Washington University Chamber Choir will present the Wedding Cantata as the centerpiece of Many Waters, a free concert of songs about love and marriage.

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, which in turn would profoundly influence the work of the contemporary British artist John Stezaker. Later this month, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic films — all selected by Stezaker himself — as part of its Fringe Figure Film Series.

Inner Horn is a small country. So small, in fact, that only one citizen at a time can fit inside. But when Inner Horn unexpectedly shrinks, it sparks a crisis in neighboring Outer Horn, which falls to a jingoistic dictator. Such is the premise of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005), a wickedly funny and wildly original political allegory by George Saunders. On March 27 and 29, Saunders, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing, will deliver a pair of events for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

As a young child, Josef Albers watched his handyman father paint houses. He grew up to become a famous artist, studying color and reducing images to their simplest shapes. On March 31, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host its spring Community Day, a free afternoon of all-ages activities. Events will include tours, performances, art-making and a reading from the children’s book An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers.

Playwright, actor and theater scholar Ashley Lucas, PhD, assistant professor of dramatic art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will speak on “Prisoners, Families and Performance: Community Engagement Through the Arts” at 4 p.m. Monday, March 26 in Eliot Hall. Lucas is the 2012 Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship Speaker.

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. Welcome to The Quick and the Dead, the fourth novel by acclaimed fiction writer Joy Williams, who will read from her work March 21 for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.