Arts & Culture

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will launch its annual Kemper Presents Concert Series with a performance by the Pernikoff Brothers March 4. The series, designed to showcase the talents and diversity of contemporary St. Louis musicians, will feature seven local acts working in a variety of styles and genres, from indie-folk and a cappella to American roots music and lush, melancholic jangle-pop. 

In an age of computer graphics and 3-D rendering, South African artist William Kentridge employs the simplest materials imaginable — paper, charcoal and pastel — to create animated films that explore apartheid, colonialism, human rights abuses and other sobering topics with breathtaking insight and poignancy. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, Kentridge — whose work also includes prints, books, sculpture, collage, etching and performing arts — will receive the Dean’s Medal from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. 

One of the most acclaimed poets of her generation, Louise Glück has, over the last four decades, received virtually every major honor available to a U.S. poet, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Wallace Stevens Award for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” At 8 p.m. Thursday, March 10, Glück, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University, will read from her work as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series. 

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is among the most celebrated Irish poets of her generation and arguably the foremost female poet today writing in Ireland and Great Britain. Next week, Ní Chuilleanáin, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will present two events as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series 

Rafael Moneo is arguably the most celebrated Spanish architect working today, known for innovative modern buildings that deftly navigate even the most challenging urban sites while preserving and respecting the existing environments. At 6:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, Moneo will discuss his work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring Public Lecture Series. 

Praised as “one of the finest players of his generation” by the Moscow’s Kommersant Daily, Scottish pianist Kenneth Hamilton is renowned for his spectacular performances of Romantic music, particularly the work of Franz Liszt (1811-86). On Feb. 26, Hamilton will mark the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth with a solo piano recital titled “Liszt and His Contemporaries: A Pianistic Panorama” and take part in a free symposium organized by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences. 

City versus forest. Apollonian rationality versus Dionysian subconscious. Wayward lovers and working-class thespians versus the regal, glittering world of the fairies. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a study in contrasts, joining elegant verse and bawdy humor with cruel punishments and magical enchantments “past the wit of man.” This month, the Performing Arts Department will present the Bard’s most popular comedy — arguably the most popular ever written — as its spring Mainstage production.  

Over the last five decades, pioneering conceptual artist Luis Camnitzer has earned an international reputation for his subtly biting prints, multiples and sculptural works that combine poetic lyricism with political and social engagement. This spring, Camnitzer will receive the Printmaker Emeritus Award during the 2011 annual conference of the Southern Graphics Council International, hosted March 16 to 19 by Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. In recognition, the university’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has organized Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and Last Words, an exhibition of works spanning the career of this influential artist.  

Poet Kathleen Peirce will ready from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Peirce is the author of four books of poetry: Mercy (1991), Divided Touch, Divided Color (1995), The Oval Hour (1999) and The Ardors (2004). 

Art historian Richard Meyer, associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), will launch the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Multiple Feminisms Lecture Series Feb. 2. Designed to expand the conversation about what it means to be feminist, the series will investigate the ongoing cultural debate over sexuality and gender, as well as the effects of that debate on modern art, visual culture and academic practice.