Author: Liam Otten

With “Boîte-en-valise,” Marcel Duchamp created an artistic retrospective the size of a salesman’s sample case. Now the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has acquired for its permanent collection an early example of this important work by one of the 20th century’s most influential artists.

What is the relationship between art and activism? How should artists engage questions of racial justice? Have events in Ferguson changed those equations? On Oct. 3, four St. Louis-based artists will discuss these questions and more as part of the Greater St. Louis Humanities Festival.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was among the most popular American composers of the 19th century. On Oct. 4, pianists Mark Tollefsen and Jae Won Kim will perform one of Gottschalk’s most enduring works in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

Johannesburg is a modern global city, the second-largest in Africa. Last summer, the students and faculty in the Sam Fox School traveled there to study new efforts to overcome the legacy of apartheid design.

In “The Divine Buoyancy of Being,” Cary Simowitz explores what happens when youthful dreams collide with economic reality, entry-level positions and the unintended consequences of a governmental shutdown.

The Saint Louis Art Museum and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis have selected Andréa Stanislav as the 2015-16 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow.

“Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing” (2014), by Washington University in St. Louis associate professor Jeffrey McCune, PhD, has been named Book of the Year by the National Communications Association’s GLBTQ Communications Studies Division and Caucus on GLBTQ Concerns.

In response to the Syrian crisis, many in St. Louis have called for the city to increase its acceptance of refugees. Architectural historian Michael Allen says existing housing stock could easily accommodate thousands of new residents.

Saul Noam Zaritt, PhD, the Friedman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has launched a new digital journal of Yiddish studies.

A play is a text but also a performance. Dance is a discipline but also a communication. To be truly understood, both must be experienced live. For its 2015-16 season, the Performing Arts Department will present classic comedy and contemporary drama as well as original works by faculty and students.