Arts & Culture

In the beginning was the fig leaf. The first garment. Eden couture. “Our students always start with a leaf-inspired project because that is the beginning of fashion,” quips Jeigh Singleton, director of the Fashion Design program in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. “It is the original inspiration for color, line, shape, structure, texture — all the things that we think of when we think of clothing.” On May 1, those qualities and more will be on full display as part of the Sam Fox School’s 82nd Annual Fashion Design Show.

Pliable, durable and lightweight, aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, used to make everything from soda cans to airplane wings to electrical transmission lines. Yet even this most versatile of elements is put to the test by The Aluminum Show, the international sensation coming to Edison Theatre April 30. Aluminum is puffed into pillows, shot out of cannons, sewn into costumes, wrapped around audience members and transformed into living creatures of astonishing warmth and complexity.

From literature, philosophy and ethics to history, law and musicology, the humanities are central to our understanding of ourselves, our communities and the larger world around us. On Wednesday, April 27, the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences will present talks by Richard J. Franke, founder of the Chicago Humanities Festival, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center, as part of “Celebrating the Humanities Day.”

Between them, Dan Presgrave, conductor of the Washington University Symphony Orchestra, and John Stewart, director of the Washington University Concert Choir, have taught in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences for a combined total of almost 60 years. On April 17, the pair — both of whom are retiring at the end of the semester — will join forces one last time for the 2011 Chancellor’s Concert. 

Based in Cologne, Germany, conceptual artist Cosima von Bonin is among the most influential yet elusive artists of her generation. At once playful, seductive and satirical, her wide-ranging creative practice interweaves sculpture, installation, video, textiles, performance and electronic music with a diverse network of collaborators. Beginning Friday, May 6, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the American Midwest.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? In the five years since the storm struck — overwhelming levees, killing hundreds and putting 80 percent of New Orleans under water — the terrible images have receded from headlines and popular memory. Yet lives remain broken in the hurricane’s wake.This month, cutting-edge poetry collective Universes will return to the Edison Ovations Series with Ameriville Unplugged, their furious homage to “The Queen of the South.” 

Just as every society has it stories, so does every discipline. The history of opera and the history of science are narratives just as surely as the events unfolding in our newspapers. From April 7-10, approximately 350 scholars from across the United States and abroad will gather in St. Louis for the International Conference on Narrative, which explores the use of narrative in literature, history, cultural studies, medicine, psychology, art history, music and other disciplines. 

The Concert Choir of Washington University will perform King David, the dramatic oratorio by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 2, in Graham Chapel. Described by Honegger as a “symphonic psalm,” King David is divided in 27 brief sections that together revisit a series of familiar Biblical stories. These range from David’s early life as a shepherd and his relationship with Saul, the first king of Israel, to the famous battle with Goliath, David’s own rise to power and his lust for the married Bathsheba.

Love and death: the most primal of motivations. At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 10, Washington University’s Eliot Trio — which consists of pianist Seth Carlin, violinist David Halen and cellist Bjorn Ranheim — will perform a pair of works by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93) — works composed, respectively, to honor a doomed romance and a departed friend.

During the 2011-12 academic year, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will mark the centennial of its College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design as well as the 50th anniversary of the Master of Urban Design program. On April 1 and 2, the Sam Fox School will preview festivities with “Architecture at 100: Architectural Education at Washington University in St. Louis,” a series of informal talks, roundtable discussions and alumni reflections.