Arts & Culture

In the years after World War II, a series of global shifts, including African decolonization and the U.S. civil rights movement, led artists to explore a new politics of form, synthesizing and integrating different visual and cultural traditions. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “African Modernism in America,” the first traveling survey to examine the diverse aesthetic strategies, and complex relationships, between African artists and American artists, scholars, patrons and cultural organizations.

Dana Ostrander has been appointed assistant curator of modern art at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. She will begin March 13.

Kristina Grimm, BArch ’06, uses her architecture degree to cobble together a career at Reebok.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has received a $10,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

John Hendrix, a professor and founding chair of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program, was installed Jan. 26 as the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art.

The writers and illustrators of many beloved picture books are from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

What changes and trends could we see this year? WashU experts in areas from artificial intelligence to climate to fashion share their insights.

Celebrated sculptor Chakaia Booker will launch the Sam Fox School’s spring Public Lecture Series with a free talk Jan. 19. Subsequent speakers will range from Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré to author and illustrator Deb J.J. Lee, avant-garde stage director Robert Wilson and fashion technologist Anouk Wipprecht.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has acquired a major recent work by artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Titled “Illumination” (2019), the piece reconstructs, in colorful Lego blocks, an iconic selfie the artist took during his 2009 arrest in Chengdu, China.

“Color can appear anywhere,” says Katharina Grosse. “It is independent from any location.” In this video, Grosse, one of Germany’s most celebrated artists, explores the nature of color, the visceral reactions it prompts and its power to override pictorial relationships and hierarchies.