Arts & Culture

Rebecca Messbarger & Mark Pegg are two of 10 national winners of the Mellon Foundation’s highly selective New Directions Fellowship.

EckmannSabine Eckmann, Ph.D., will become director of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis effective July 1, 2005, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Eckmann joined the Kemper Art Museum as curator in fall 1999 and also regularly teaches seminars in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. She succeeds Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, who has led the museum since 1998. Weil, a longtime faculty member in art history, will retire June 30.

The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences has announced winners for the 2005 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition. Four student plays were selected in two categories. Full-length winners were Highness, by junior Carolyn Kras, and Shades of Light Blue, by junior Yuan Ji. Flick, by freshman Nicholas A. Loyal, and Chosen Family, by freshman Nick Rogers, won for short plays.

Washington University’s Kingsbury Ensemble will conclude its 2004-05 season with works of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) — today’s most popular composers of the Baroque era. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 15, in Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall. Tickets are $5 to $15.

The Washington University Opera will present excerpts from four operas by Richard Strauss at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7, in the University’s Karl Umrath Lounge.

The Passing ZoneFrom clubs and machetes to bowling balls and members of the audience, Owen Morse and Jon Wee — collectively known as The Passing Zone — boldly juggle what no jugglers have juggled before. On May 6 and 7, Owens and Wee will bring their trademark mix of side-splitting comedy and gut-wrenching suspense to campus as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series.

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Chamber Choir will present the 2005 Chancellor’s Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 1, in Graham Chapel. The program, which includes works by Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn and Ottorino Respighi, will highlight two recently acquired instruments — a new harp and a new grand piano — as well as Graham Chapel’s newly restored Roland Quest organ.

Eric WoolseyChristena Doggrell in “Six Seconds in Charlack”For St. Louis commuters, the small inner-ring suburb of Charlack, Mo., passes in the blink of an eye, its borders marked by a pair of signs set only a few hundred yards apart along I-170. Yet as Brian Golden’s Six Seconds in Charlack reminds us, sometimes an instant is enough to change a life. The drama — winner of Washington University’s 2004 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition — will be presented by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences April 28 to May 1.

The Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences will present Exploring the History of Art, a symposium honoring Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building. Weil, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts as well as director of the Sam Fox Arts Center and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, is retiring this June. He has been associated with Washington University for 47 years.

Courtesy photo*Sacred Music, Sacred Dance*Monks from Tibet’s legendary Drepung Loseling monastery will present The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music, Sacred Dance at Washington University in St. Louis’ Edison Theatre April 29 and 30. The concert — presented by the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series — will offer a rare opportunity to experience temple music and dance from one of the world’s most ancient sacred traditions, as performed by monks for whom these traditions remain a way of life.