Arts & Culture

It’s the stage that launched juniors fashion. On Sunday, May 4, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will present its 85th Annual Fashion Design Show in the 560 Music Center. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza will feature dozens of models wearing scores of outfits by 26 aspiring designers.

The parent company of Commerce Bank has finalized donation of two paintings by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968), one of the most important German artists of the mid-20th century, to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.

During his 40-year career, Richard Henry Franklin has worked in every facet of architecture and mentored scores of students, architects, planners and community advocates. On Thursday, April 17, Franklin will return to Washington University in St. Louis as one of seven alumni honored at the Sam Fox School’s annual Awards for Distinction dinner.

This month marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare. From April 17-20, WUSTL’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will celebrate the Bard with a new production of “Twelfth Night,” one of his most beloved comedies, in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Los Angeles-based artist Won Ju Lim is the 2013-14 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Lim’s exhibit “Raycraft is Dead” opens today, April 11, at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

At once bouncy and philosophical, 500 Clown combines acrobatics, circus arts, commedia dell’arte and in-your-face improvisation to create a unique brand of physical, action-packed theater. On Saturday, April 12, the Chicago troupe will return to Edison with “500 Clown Trapped,” its first all-ages show.

A mysterious stranger arrives with a mysterious commission. The fevered composer fears the work may foreshadow his own demise. Mozart’s “Requiem” in D minor is perhaps the most mythologized work by the most mythologized composer in classical music. On April 13, the WUSTL Choirs and Symphony Orchestra will perform the “Requiem” as part of the 2014 Chancellor’s Concert.

Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new—new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. So begins Ms. Hempel Chronicles, the acclaimed second novel by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. On April 8 and 10, Bynum will present a pair of events for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

A fuse burns, a tire rolls free. A lit candle, mounted on wheels, ignites a small explosion. In “The Way Things Go” (1987), conceptual artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss play with the idea of chain reaction. This summer, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present the groundbreaking film in “Moving Parts: Time and Motion in Contemporary Art.”

Heather Corcoran, chair of the design program in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has been named director of the school’s College & Graduate School of Art.