Arts & Culture

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesSeth CarlinThe Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present two concerts in its newly opened 560 Music Center Nov. 17 and 18. Noted pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music, will present a solo piano recital at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17. In addition, the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will perform works by Schubert, Franck and Britten at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18.

Washington University’s Center for the Humanities and Program in Film & Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host their Fourth Annual Children’s Film Symposium Thursday and Saturday, Nov. 15 and 17. Presented in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis, the event will feature a keynote address by Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006) and a Q&A with Marion Comer, writer and director of the film 48 Angels (2006).

Novelist Brock Clarke, Ph.D., author of the darkly comic “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England” (2007), will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Rock band? Musical theater? Indie-pop trio GrooveLily combines the best of both worlds with “Striking 12,” a refreshingly alternative holiday show based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale “The Little Match Girl.” The show will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 16 and 17 as part of Edison Theatre’s OVATIONS! Series.

This month, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “Beauty and the Blonde: An Exploration of American Art and Popular Culture,” the first museum show to investigate the strategic use of the blonde in contemporary art. The show starts Nov. 16 and runs through Jan. 28, 2008.

Lynn Hershman LeesonPioneering performance artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and feminist scholar Maria Elena Buszek will join Catharina Manchanda, Ph.D., curator for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, for a panel discussion at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16. The event is held in conjunction with Beauty and the Blonde: An Exploration of American Art and Popular Culture, the first museum exhibition to investigate the strategic use of the blonde in contemporary art.

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis will read from his work at 8 p.m. Nov. 8 for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellis attended Harvard University and in 1988 co-founded The Dark Room Collective, the Boston area’s only reading series dedicated to writers of color. In 1995 he earned […]

Photo by David KilperThe Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a two-weekend run of “Measure for Measure,” one of Shakespeare’s most confounding “problem plays” that explores the nature of power, the relationships between men and women and the battle between justice and mercy.

Al Parker, *Mother and Daughter Skiing*The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections will launch the new Modern Graphic History Library with a pair of exhibitions that open Friday, Nov. 16. “Highlights from the Modern Graphic History Library” will open with a reception at 5:30 p.m. in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room & Grand Staircase Lobby. A reception for “Ephemeral Beauty: Al Parker and the American Women’s Magazine, 1940-1960” will immediately follow at 7 p.m. in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Brock ClarkeNovelist Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007), will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. The book — Clarke’s fourth — tells the darkly comic story of Sam Pulsifer, a literary bumbler who, at the age of 18, accidentally burns down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Mass.