Arts & Culture

Wang Haichen, *Garden Blues* (2002), porcelainChina boasts one of the world’s oldest and richest pottery traditions, yet only in recent years have Chinese ceramicists begun to emerge as individual “studio artists,” rather than collective practitioners. The Washington University School of Art’s Des Lee Gallery explores this burgeoning “new age” in Chinese Ceramics Today: Between Tradition and Contemporary Expression, an exhibition of works by 23 contemporary ceramicists from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Photo by Constantine E. MichaelidesChurches and chapels comprise the Aegean Islands’ most distinctive architectural forms.The history of architecture is largely the history of official buildings commissioned by ruling elites. Yet with the home improvement market expected to reach record-high levels in 2003, it is worth remembering that the true character of any city or town rests largely on the vernacular traditions of ordinary, often architecturally untrained citizens. In his forthcoming book The Aegean Crucible, Constantine E. Michaelides, emeritus dean and professor of the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, explains how many of the Greek island’s most defining forms were developed by local builders responding to particular climatic, cultural and political circumstances.

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoMore than half of college students now own a cell phone, according to the authors of *Letting Go*.The author of a book offering advice to parents sending a child off to college says that the ubiquitous cell phone makes it easier for parents and students to keep in touch, but it also offers a challenge to the “letting-go” process. Karen Levin Coburn, assistant vice chancellor for students and associate dean for the freshman transition at Washington University in St. Louis, is co-author of Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years, which provides a comprehensive, down-to-earth guide for parents experiencing the varying emotions of parenting a college student. The book, now in its newly released fourth edition, has sold more than 300,000 copies since first being released in 1988. “When we wrote our 1997 edition, very few people used cell phones. They just weren’t an issue,” Coburn says. “Now the majority of students have a cell phone and they’ve made a huge difference, pro and con, in the communication patterns between parents and students.”

Under the guidance of its advisory board, the International Writers Center in Arts & Sciences at Washington University is expanding its mission, and to reflect this growth, changing its name as well. In September, the International Writers Center will become The Center for the Humanities with the tag line: Dedicated to Letters and Humanistic Research and Their Presence in the Public Life. The Center for the Humanities will host a ceremony and celebration at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 2, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

CarcaterraLorenzo Carcaterra, author of The New York Times bestseller Sleepers, will launch the 2003-04 Center for the Humanities’ Writers Series with a pair of events Sept. 22 and 23. A former reporter for The New York Daily News, Carcaterra is also the author of Street Boys, and currently serves as a writer and producer for NBC’s Law & Order.

KiberdDeclan Kiberd, one of the world’s preeminent scholars of modern Irish literature, will launch Washington University’s fall Writing Program Reading Series in Arts & Sciences with a pair of talks Sept. 9 and 11.

Harriet Hosmer, Portrait of Wayman Crow, Sr., 1866, Carrara marbleSince its founding in 1853, Washington University in St. Louis has grown from a small private school to one of the nation’s premiere research universities. Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World, which opens Sept. 5 at the Gallery of Art, celebrates that journey with hundreds of archival photographs, drawings, posters, letters, scrapbooks and other materials chronicling key events, people and discoveries in the life of the university.

*Pu’uhonua O Honaunau, 2002*Chicago photographer Alan Cohen has traveled the world tracing overlapping waves of stone, earth, asphalt, brick and concrete — the geologic and manmade ground — that demark physical and perceptual “sites” such as national borders, the path of the equator and places of historic violence. This fall, the Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis will survey Cohen’s work since the mid-1990s as part of its Contemporary Projects Series.

*Big Baby* by Charles BurnsGreat art, of course, can speak for itself, but like any other social activity, it can also spur strong opinions, heated debate and intellectual illumination. This fall, the Washington University Gallery of Art will present a series of special Friday evening events — including films, lectures, tours, concerts and artists’ talks — designed to compliment its fall exhibitions.

Martin Luther King, Jr.August 28 marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, one of the most famous and stirring addresses in U.S. history. In commemoration, the International Writers Center (IWC) in Arts & Sciences will host a public roundtable with St. Louis scholars and civil rights activists. The event also includes a video presentation of King’s entire, 15-minute address.