Arts & Culture

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a preview of “Lest We Forget,” a large-scale public art installation featuring monumental portraits of Holocaust survivors, beginning at 3:15pm Thursday, Oct. 20. The exhibition will include 12 portraits of survivors now living in the St. Louis area.

Cinderella wishes for festivals. Jack wishes for food. The baker and his wife wish for a child. The storybook world is filled with longing and magic and the happiest of ever afters. For a while, at least. But what happens once the wishes have all come true?

Mary Bartling’s website on banned books aims to help us become better readers and better global citizens.

“Lest We Forget,” a public art installation by noted Italian-German photographer Luigi Toscano, will open Oct. 20 in WashU’s Ann and Andrew Tisch Park. The exhibition will feature nearly 100 contemporary, large-scale portraits of Holocaust survivors — including 12 survivors now living in St. Louis.

Fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg will discuss her life and work in a free talk at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Graham Chapel. The event is hosted by the Saint Louis Fashion Fund, in partnership with Caleres and WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

As a young sculptor, Chakaia Booker collected scraps of ruined tires from the streets of lower Manhattan. The material was ubiquitous, malleable and symbolically resonant. Now “Shaved Portions,” one of Booker’s largest and most ambitious projects to date, has been installed on WashU’s Danforth Campus.

John Griswold, a staff writer at the Common Reader, a publication of Washington University, has published a new book, “The Age of Clear Profit: Essays on Home and the Narrow Road.” He will have an event at Left Bank Books Oct. 10.

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians blended jazz with experimental music while staging concerts in unusual venues. In “Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM,” Paul Steinbeck, associate professor of music in Arts & Sciences, uncovers the group’s surprising rise to become international touring artists.

Zachary Stern’s frenetic comedy “Democratic Airlines” and Melia Van Hecke’s contemporary folktale “The Fern” will receive world premiere staged readings as part of the 2022 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival. The festival is named for alumnus A.E. Hotchner, who famously bested Tennessee Williams in a campus playwriting competition.

Most presidents have 100 years until they fade from Americans’ memory. Henry L. “Roddy” Roediger in Arts & Sciences will discuss his research into this and the broader national collective memory on Sept. 29.