Author: Liam Otten

Photo courtesy of National Eye Institute, National Institutes of HealthVisual perception changes as eyes age.Graphic design can be a matter of life and death. Literally. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 40 percent of Americans aged 65 and over use five or more different medications each week, making unintended drug interactions a major contributor to an estimated annual 180,000 fatal or life-threatening adverse drug reactions. Yet drug labeling is a kind of typographical Wild West, says Ken Botnick, professor of visual communications in the School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis. “Drug companies are required to divulge certain types of information but there are no requirements in terms of how accessible that information is made,” Botnick explains. “Typically, decisions about the way information is organized — the hierarchy of presentation, the size and clarity of type — are simply afterthoughts.” Medical information design is just one of the issues to be explored as part of “Visual Design for an Aging Population,” a national symposium Botnick is organizing in March 2004.

Photo courtesy of Washington University ArchivesA Tennessee Williams play will be staged for the first time.Twenty years after his death, one of Tennessee Williams’ plays is seeing the light of a stage for the first time. “Me Vashya,” an early play by Williams, will receive its world premiere at Washington University in St. Louis in February. Written in 1937 while Williams was a student here and known as Tom, his birth name, the play has remained in Washington University archives for more than 60 years. It has never been published or performed — until now.

American artist Frank Stella has remained a prominent and innovative practitioner of abstract painting since the late fifties. Born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, Stella studied painting at the Phillips Academy in Andover and at Princeton University, where he graduated in 1958 with a degree in history. In 1959 he moved to New York and […]

Earl E. and Myrtle E. Walker are CEO and vice president, respectively, of Carr Lane Manufacturing Co., one of the world’s foremost suppliers of tooling components. In addition, over the last 30 years their subsidiary Carr Lane Castings — formerly Brentwood Castings, Inc. — has earned a national reputation for fabricating bronze, brass, aluminum, stainless […]

Eric P. Newman of St. Louis is one of America’s foremost numismatists. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS 1932) and Washington University in St. Louis (JD 1935), his storied career began more than eight decades ago when his grandfather gave him an 1859 one-cent piece. In the years since, he has solved […]

Evelyn E. Newman, a creative St. Louisian, has helped launch some of St. Louis’ foremost arts institutions and cultural events. The Spirit of St. Louis Fund, which later evolved into the Arts & Education Council of Greater St. Louis, was founded in her living room. In 1950, she inaugurated the Greater St. Louis Book Fair […]

The Sam Fox Arts Center at Washington University in St. Louis will break ground for two new buildings — an art museum and a School of Art studio facility — April 14, 2004.

The Sam Fox Arts Center at Washington University in St. Louis will dedicate a new School of Art studio building in honor of St. Louis community leaders Earl E. and Myrtle E. Walker.

A major gift from Eric P. and Evelyn E. Newman will create a state-of-the art numismatic museum as part of the Sam Fox Arts Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sean Scully, *Untitled* (1989), Oilstick and watercolorThe Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis will present American Art on Paper from the 1960s to the Present: Selections from the Permanent Collection Jan. 23 to April 18. The exhibiiton includes 47 prints, drawings and photographs by 31 nationally and internationally known artists.