Author: Liam Otten

Casey O’Callaghan, professor of philosophy and of philosophy-neuroscience-psychology in Arts & Sciences, has won a prestigious Fellowship for University Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

James M. Kemper Jr., the former chairman of Commerce Bancshares and a major supporter of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, died Thursday, Dec. 15. He was 95.

Rich O’Donnell, director of the Electronic Music Lab in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Jess Dugan, an exhibition preparator for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, are among 10 recipients of the Regional Arts Commission’s 2016 Artist Fellowships. Also receiving a 2016 award is clay artist Ruth Reese, a 2002 alumna of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

A new program, organized by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and local nonprofit Maturity and Its Muse, brings together student vocalists and local memory care patients.

Eugene J. Mackey III, founder of Mackey Mitchell Architects, died Sunday, Nov. 27, after a long battle with cancer. He was 77.

Carmon Colangelo has been installed as the inaugural Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The newly endowed position was established thanks to a $5 million commitment from Washington University Trustee Ralph Nagel, BS ’67, MArch, ’69, and his wife, Trish Nagel, JD ’74. A formal ceremony was held Nov. 18 in Steinberg Hall.

Washington University Dance Theatre will present “Critical Mass,” its 2016 concert, Dec. 2-4 in Edison Theatre. The annual event will feature dozens of dancers, selected by audition, performing new and original choreography by seven faculty and visiting artists.

With “Here Be Dragons,” his new exhibition at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, Sam Fox School dean Carmon Colangelo examines the limits of knowledge and the precarious social and political states that define our contemporary moment.

Shimon Attie, who has earned an international reputation for exploring themes of place, memory and communal trauma, will serve as the 2016-17 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow. The fellowship, which is jointly organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, consists of two monthlong residencies, during which recipients lead studios in the Sam Fox School while preparing an exhibition for the museum’s Currents series.

How do we define ourselves? What traits do we admire, what talents do we cultivate? And what happens if we pick the wrong things? In “Thinking It,” playwright-in-residence Carter W. Lewis examines the intoxicating power of love as well as the choices — deliberate and otherwise — that shape who we are and who we become.