Arts & Culture

The American dream is a fragile thing. Just ask the Tate family, a bickering, dysfunctional clan struggling to retain its dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of an unforgiving Western desert. Welcome to Curse of the Starving Class, Sam Shepard’s bitterly funny — and disturbingly prescient — family drama. This month, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present the play for five performances in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. 

Washington University’s Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has been ranked 9th in the nation, according to DesignIntelligence, which publishes  an annual survey on America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools.

Acclaimed fiction and nonfiction writer Francine Prose, author most recently of Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, will receive the 2010 Washington University International Humanities Medal Nov. 30. Awarded biennially, the medal honors the lifetime work of a noted scholar, writer or artist who has made a significant and sustained contribution to the world of letters or the arts.

Herman Hertzberger, once described by sociologist Abram de Swaan as today’s preeminent “sociological” architect, will present the Sam Fox School’s annual Fumihiko Maki Lecture at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10. The founder and principal of Architectuurstudio HH in Amsterdam, Hertzberger is known for cultural, educational and residential projects throughout The Netherlands and abroad. 

Art historian Monica Amor will discuss “Affect and the Participatory Dimension of Brazilian Neoconcretism: 1959-1964” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. Part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series, the talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. 

Israeli violinist Eyal Kless will join pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, and two musicians from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra — violist Shannon Farrell Williams and cellist Bjorn Ranheim — for a free performance at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8. The program will feature music of Frédéric Chopin, Samuel Barber and Robert Schumann. 

Acclaimed poet and fiction writer Eileen Myles, named by BUST magazine as “the rock star of modern poetry” and author most recently of Inferno (A Poet’s Novel), will present a pair of events as part of the fall Writing Program Reading Series. Myles is the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences. 

It’s a madcap weekend of comic mayhem as Chicago sensations 500 Clown target a pair of literary classics with in-your-face improv, commedia dell’arte and physical theater. On Friday, Nov. 5, the company will descend upon Edison Theatre with 500 Clown Macbeth, a boisterous romp through William Shakespeare, followed on Saturday, Nov. 6, by 500 Clown Frankenstein, a similar affront to Mary Shelley. 

Lighting designer Ruth Grauert, who spent 40 years as assistant and stage director to legendary choreographer Alwin Nikolais (1910-93), will discuss “The Path to Post-Modern Dance and the Nikolais Aesthetic” at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3. The talk will explore the evolution of dance since the 1940s, as choreographers increasingly moved away from technique-centered to idea-centered works. 

Influential sculptor Jessica Stockholder, director of graduate studies in sculpture at Yale University, will discuss her work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1. The talk, which is co-sponsored by Laumeier Sculpture Park, is free and open to the public and will take place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium.