Arts & Culture

Documentary filmmaker and The Daily Show senior producer Sara Taksler’s, AB ’01, latest film, Tickling Giants, is about how political satire shook the halls of power in Egypt after the Arab Spring.

When Louisa Rechter, AB ’09, and Alessandra Perez-Rubio, BFA ’09, couldn’t find designer, black-tie attire at a price point they could afford, they decided to create their own line. Mestiza New York, a fashion line blends Filipino and American style, is the happy result.

A rubber tire hangs from the ceiling. A glittering crowd sips champagne. “To minimal art,” a woman toasts, and promptly falls dead. So begins “Gossip,” a satirical who-done-it by Canadian playwright George F. Walker. Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present the sly, noir-inspired comedy April 20-23 in Edison Theatre.

Internationally acclaimed pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform music of Béla Bartók, Robert Schumann, Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky April 23 as part of Washington University’s inaugural Great Artist Series.

In her Hotchner-winning drama “Son of Soil,” which debuts March 30, senior Andie Berry examines the ways tragedy and grief echo across generations.

Filmmaker Ericka Beckman (BFA ’74) and visual artist Ian Weaver (MFA ’08) are recipients of the inaugural Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award.

Poet Phillip B. Williams, a 2014 graduate of The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, is among 10 recipients of the 2017 Whiting Award.

While President Trump’s proposed $970 million budget cuts in the arts and humanities account for less than one-tenth of a percent of savings in the administration’s $1.1 trillion federal budget plan, the effect could gut culture and diminish quality of life across the United States if not the world, say experts at Washington University in St. Louis.

Pedro Pitarch has won the 2016-17 James Harrison Steedman Memorial Fellowship in Architecture. The $50,000 grant, which supports international travel for research, is one of the largest such architecture awards in the United States. Pitarch, who was chosen from a field of 100 applicants, will use the grant to explore the intersection of public and private spaces in cities across Europe, Asia and the United States.

In the last year, dozens of books by university faculty and alumni hit the shelves. Here we share just a small selection of the noteworthy tomes that are making an impact on literature, research and best-seller lists.