Author: Liam Otten

Internationally acclaimed architect Francis Kéré, winner of the 2022 Pritzker Prize, will discuss his work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts April 1. The first African architect to win the Pritzker, Kéré is known for inventive civic projects, particularly schools, that employ local labor and indigenous materials.

Acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax, who plays with “with youthful brio, incisive rhythm, bountiful imagination” (New York Times) will perform music of Schubert and Liszt March 26 as part of the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences’ 2023 Great Artists Series.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “Torkwase Dyson: Bird and Lava” March 22 to July 10. Anchored by a newly acquired work, the display spans painting, drawing, sculpture and animation — along with architectural models relating to Dyson’s new commission for St. Louis’ citywide public art triennial Counterpublic.

Olivia Baba and Connor Seger, both seniors pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fashion design from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, each will receive awards as part of the 2023 Fashion Scholarship Fund competition.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a press preview of the exhibition “African Modernism in America” at 10 a.m. Friday, March 10. The exhibition opens to the public that evening.

George C. Hatch, who taught in the Department of History in Arts & Sciences for more than 30 years, died Feb. 25, 2023, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 85.

David Cunningham and Geoff Ward, both in Arts & Sciences, received a $500,000 three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, along with collaborators from other universities, for the project “The Virality of Racial Terror in US Newspapers, 1863-1921.”

Large-scale redevelopment is often pitched as a strategy for reviving struggling downtowns. Yet such projects — with their acres of asphalt and tenuous connections to surrounding environs — are usually poor substitutes for the organic neighborhoods they displace, argues Patty Heyda, an associate professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

England’s legendary Academy of St Martin in the Fields, known for its “delectable mix of drive and vibrant coloring” (Baltimore Sun), will perform music of Schubert, Schumann, Sallinen and Tchaikovsky March 4 as part of the Department of Music’s 2023 Great Artists Series.

In the years after World War II, a series of global shifts, including African decolonization and the U.S. civil rights movement, led artists to explore a new politics of form, synthesizing and integrating different visual and cultural traditions. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “African Modernism in America,” the first traveling survey to examine the diverse aesthetic strategies, and complex relationships, between African artists and American artists, scholars, patrons and cultural organizations.