Author: Liam Otten

The German Academy for Language and Literature will award its 2019 Friedrich Gundolf Prizeto Paul Michael Lützeler, the Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Amy Hauft, the Leslie Waggener Professor in Sculpture at the University of Texas at Austin, has been appointed director of the College & Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Also joining the Sam Fox School faculty will be sculptor Jack Risley, the Meredith and Cornelia long Chair of Art and Art History at UT Austin.

A light flashes. A wing rustles. A feather floats gently to the floor. Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” features some of the most indelible images in American theater. From Feb. 22 to March 3, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will stage Kushner’s epic drama for six performances in Edison Theatre.

Senior Hannah Gilberstadt leads the Jazz Band at Washington University through a rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1962 classic “Só Danço Samba” (“I Only Dance Samba”). The Brazilian composer was among the 20th century’s most influential songwriters, and a pioneer of the bossa nova style.

Omari Mizrahi will conduct free master classes and a Q&A on the dance style known as AfrikFusion at Washington University and COCA Feb. 20 and 21. Mizrahi, who teaches voguing and ballroom dance at the Broadway Dance Center in New York, has performed at the MTV Video Music Awards and recently was featured in Janet Jackson’s “Made for Now” video.

The Performing Arts Department will debut its production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” Feb. 22 in Edison Theatre. “At the heart of the play is a question about who gets to be a citizen of this country,” said dramaturg Paige McGinley. “Gay people, people with AIDS, the addicted — these are often seen as society’s most disposable. Kushner puts them at the center of the American story.”

Geoff Ward, associate professor and associate chair of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the 2018-19 W.E.B. Du Bois Award by the Western Society of Criminology.

Tim Portlock, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a 2019 Artists Fellowship from the Regional Arts Commission. Two alumni, Margaret Keller (MFA ‘89) and William Morris (BFA ‘85), are also among the honorees.

Virtuoso pianist Nikolai Lugansky, praised for his “plush sound and plenty impetuosity” by The New York Times, will open Washington University’s third Great Artists Series Feb. 10 with works by Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Bob Smith was a Renaissance man — a talented painter, designer and bookmaker who trained generations of students while earning national renown for his sculptural fountain designs. In “Robert C. Smith: An Eclectic Studio & A Remarkable Career,” the Sam Fox School will showcase more than 100 works by the longtime professor, who died last fall at the age of 92.