Arts & Culture

Large-scale redevelopment is often pitched as a strategy for reviving struggling downtowns. Yet such projects — with their acres of asphalt and tenuous connections to surrounding environs — are usually poor substitutes for the organic neighborhoods they displace, argues Patty Heyda, an associate professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

England’s legendary Academy of St Martin in the Fields, known for its “delectable mix of drive and vibrant coloring” (Baltimore Sun), will perform music of Schubert, Schumann, Sallinen and Tchaikovsky March 4 as part of the Department of Music’s 2023 Great Artists Series.

In the years after World War II, a series of global shifts, including African decolonization and the U.S. civil rights movement, led artists to explore a new politics of form, synthesizing and integrating different visual and cultural traditions. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “African Modernism in America,” the first traveling survey to examine the diverse aesthetic strategies, and complex relationships, between African artists and American artists, scholars, patrons and cultural organizations.

Can murder excuse murder? In “The Oresteia,” her adaptation of the epic Greek trilogy, contemporary playwright Ellen McLaughlin explores cycles of violence, the ironies of vengeance and the often-tangled search for justice.

Dana Ostrander has been appointed assistant curator of modern art at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. She will begin March 13.

This Is Not My Home is the first children’s book from Eugenia Yoh, BFA ’22, and Vivienne Chang, an economics and strategy student at Olin Business School. It’s a story of a young girl coming to grips with a family’s move from Taiwan.

Kristina Grimm, BArch ’06, uses her architecture degree to cobble together a career at Reebok.

Dating apps make no secret of their use of artificial intelligence to help users find their perfect match. But now some users are employing it to strike up conversations and flirt with potential matches. Olin Business School’s Liberty Vittert, a data and cybersecurity expert, explains the limits of AI and how to know when you may be chatting with a bot.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has received a $10,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Novelist, screenwriter and journalist Sayed Kashua is regarded as one of Israel’s most prominent Palestinian voices. On Feb. 12, Cinema St. Louis will present a special preview of “Let It Be Morning,” adapted from a novel by the WashU doctoral candidate.