Author: Liam Otten

Gene Hoefel, professor emeritus at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, died peacefully in his sleep at the Anthology of Clayton View assisted living facility on Dec. 28, 2020. He was 86.

A van gleams darkly in the seedy neon of 1970s Times Square. Taxis queue for gas amidst a global oil crisis. In “The Autonomous Future of Mobility,” the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis explores how car culture shapes American cities, energy consumption and popular notions of freedom and independence.

“Aperture,” the 2020 Washington University Dance Theatre concert, will begin streaming via the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 18. Typically presented in Edison Theatre, the annual event has been reimagined for this year as a “Dance for the Camera” film festival.

Garrett Duncan, associate professor of education and of African and African American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, died Dec. 8, 2020, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He was 59.

Protest and contagion. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Anti-maskers and contact tracing. In “Remember… That Time Before the Last Time,” students from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences join forces with Ron Himes and The Black Rep to reflect on the year that has been and to explore their own experiences of social protest, law enforcement, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“All the Flowers Kneeling,” the debut collection by Paul Tran, a senior poetry fellow in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will be published by Penguin Books as part of the Penguin Poets Series.

The 2020 presidential election is over. Joe Biden has won. And yet the clarity and consensus that elections once brought, however grudgingly, now founders on the shores of post-fact partisanship, says Douglas Flowe, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The most powerful aspect of the Whitney Museum’s 2018 retrospective ‘David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night’ was not hanging on a wall, but rather was vibrating through the air. In an empty room the artist’s voice consumed all who entered, its crushed granite timbre almost tactile to the ear.

In this video, artist Tim Portlock, chair of undergraduate art at the Sam Fox School, discusses his use of visual effects and 3D animation software, his new exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the state of the American dream.

On Nov. 7, Joe Biden was declared the winner in Pennsylvania, making him president-elect of the United States. Yet it had been clear since Americans went to the polls Nov. 3 that Biden would win the popular vote. The days of uncertainty and drama were entirely due to the arcane and archaic mechanics of the Electoral College, says Rachel Brown, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis.