Author: Liam Otten

Shannon Wood, principal timpani for the St. Louis Symphony, will debut a new work Sept. 13 in the 560 Music Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Written largely during Wood’s month-long stay in Sicily, the piece seeks to capture the rhythms and flavors of life on the Mediterranean island. The premiere will come as part of “Symphony in Your College,” a free concert presented by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and the St. Louis Symphony.

This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis presents “World War I: War of Images, Images of War.” Drawn primarily from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where it debuted in fall 2014, the exhibition features more than 150 objects that together chart a chronological path from exuberant outbreak through years of grinding combat and into the long, unsettled aftermath.

The Black Rep will launch its 2015-16 season with “Tell Me Somethin’ Good” at Washington University Sept. 2-20. The decades-spanning musical revue, one of the company’s most popular shows, is the first of three productions The Black Rep will present this year in the university’s Edison Theatre.

The city is filled with stories and tells stories of its own. Last fall, the Center for the Humanities and the Sam Fox School — with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation — launched The Divided City, an urban humanities initiative exploring historical and contemporary segregation across the globe and in St. Louis. Funded projects include an oral history of the Ferguson movement, launched this summer by Jeffrey McCune, PhD, Clarissa Rile Hayward, PhD, and Meredith Evans, PhD.

​Barry R. Schactman, professor emeritus of drawing and painting in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, died at his home Friday, July 3, 2015, surrounded by family and friends, after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 85.

“Thank you for what you have done so far, but you have raised my expectations through your successes,” said Chancellor Mark Wrighton, at Washington University in St. Louis’ 2015 Commencement. “The future of the world depends on you!”

Kristina Kleutghen, PhD, has been selected as the inaugural David W. Mesker Career Development Professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis. A specialist in early modern and modern Chinese art, Kleutghen’s research investigates Sino-foreign interaction, the imperial court, optical devices and connections to visual culture, science and mathematics.

David M. Holtzman, a leading expert in researching the underlying mechanisms that lead to Alzheimer’s disease, and Paul Michael Lützeler, an authority on 18th, 19th and 20th century German literature, will receive Washington University in St. Louis’ 2015 faculty achievement awards, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.

In 1976, as a business major at Washington University in St. Louis, Ron Himes began staging theatrical performances. Thirty-eight seasons later, Himes remains founder and producing director for The Black Rep, one of the nation’s largest and most respected African-American theater companies.

“Rotation 1: Contemporary Art from the Peter Norton Gift” opens Friday, May 1 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The exhibition will offer St. Louis museum-goers their first chance to view highlights from a major recent gift by the renowned arts philanthropist and software entrepreneur.