Arts & Culture

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its 2010 Faculty Creative Activity Research Grants. Five art and architecture faculty members from the Sam Fox School will each receive between $1,000 and $8,000 to support projects ranging from reportage and publication to architectural case studies and GPS mapping of the Mekong River. 

Viola da gambist Elizabeth Macdonald, director of strings in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, and harpsichordist Charles Metz, PhD, will launch WUSTL’s fall Danforth University Center Chamber Music Series at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 20.The concert, titled “The Golden Age of the Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord,” will highlight music for these two instruments, which reached their “golden age” during the first half of the 18th century.  

Tony Award-nominated actor Stephen McKinley Henderson will discuss his life and work as part of an informal, Inside the Actors Studio-style dialogue at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, in Edison Theatre. Titled “An Evening with Stephen McKinley Henderson,” the event is presented in conjunction with the symposium “Uncovering/Discovering The Other,” which runs through Friday.  

The Edison will launch its 2010-11 Ovations Series with Of Bodies of Elements, a new evening-length concert by Dancing Earth, the premier indigenous contemporary dance ensemble working today. Led by choreographer Rulan Tangen, this acclaimed troupe is poised at the intersection of ritual, culture and ecology, employing Native American traditions and perspectives to explore contemporary — particularly environmental — issues and concerns.  

The haunting modern fairy tales of Kate Bernheimer both echo and update stories and motifs drawn from traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore. On Sept. 16 and 23, Bernheimer, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will present two events as part of the Writing Program Reading Series. 

The St. Louis Nu-Jazz 5tet will launch Washington University’s fall Jazz at Holmes series with a free concert at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9. The popular series features professional jazz musicians from around St. Louis and abroad performing in Holmes Lounge — a casual, coffeehouse-style setting — most Thursday evenings throughout the academic year.  

Architect Julie Eizenberg and visual artist Ann Hamilton will launch the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series with a pair of talks Sept. 13 and 15.

From mordant humor and exuberant defiance to love and war and existential anguish, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will scale the heights and plumb the depths of our shared mortal coil with its 2010-11 season.

Multimedia solos and structured improvisations will share the stage with Flamenco and classical Indian works in Dance Close Up, the biennial concert of new and original choreography by faculty in the Dance Program in Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will host a traveling exhibition of design concepts by five architectural teams vying to reshape the area surrounding Eero Saarinen’s iconic Gateway Arch. The teams — which among them include seven faculty from the Sam Fox School’s College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — are finalists in an international competition organized by the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation. Titled “Framing a Modern Masterpiece,” the competition aims to improve connections and transitions between the Arch grounds, downtown St. Louis and the Mississippi riverfront.