Arts & Culture

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts is currently constructing two new buildings by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki. Photo by Stan Strembicki, professor of art.The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis will reconfigure its nationally ranked programs in architecture and art, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Effective immediately, the School of Architecture will be organized as the undergraduate College of Architecture and the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. Similarly, the School of Art will become the undergraduate College of Art and the Graduate School of Art.

Some of the country’s leading scholars of jazz and American culture will teach at Washington University’s National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for High School Teachers July 4-29. “‘Teaching Jazz as American Culture’ will offer participants an exciting opportunity to learn about one of the most extraordinary art forms the United States has ever produced,” says Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., Washington University’s Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and director of the Summer Institute. “The instructors in the institute are among the most noted jazz scholars, writers and composers in the country,” says Early, “and the high school teachers’ exposure to this collection of expertise should be both enriching and inspiring.”

James RichardsThe Gateway Festival Orchestra will launch its 42nd season of free summer concerts with “Midwest Musical Masters,” highlighting composers and young artists from Missouri and Illinois, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 10, in Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle. The orchestra is conducted by James Richards, professor of orchestral studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Subsequent concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 17, 24 and 31.

Courtesy imageSoweto Gospel ChoirThe Edison Theatre at Washington University in St. Louis will celebrate its 33rd year of exuberant dance, rich musical traditions and classic and cutting-edge theatre with the 2005-06 OVATIONS! Series. Founded in 1973, the OVATIONS! Series serves both the campus and St. Louis communities by presenting the highest caliber national and international artists performing works intended to challenge, educate and inspire. The series highlights the interdisciplinary, the multicultural and the experimental, through new works as well as through innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

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.