Arts & Culture

Poetry scholar Marjorie Perloff will receive the 2014 International Humanities Medal from Washington University in St. Louis. Granted biennially, the $25,000 award is largest prize from an American institution to cover the broad spectrum of the humanities.

The Railway Exchange Building in downtown St. Louis is an icon, synonymous with Christmas lights, holiday cheer and civic pride. Yet since being vacated by Macy’s in 2013, the structure has sat largely empty. Now The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts are partnering to explore adaptive reuse strategies for the 21-story high-rise.

Ten cutting-edge Sukkahs by architects and designers from around the nation will be installed Oct. 7-13 on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The projects are winners of “Sukkah City STL 2014: Between Absence and Presence,” an ambitious contemporary design competition presented by St. Louis Hillel and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

In “Reembarque/Reshipment,” Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando examines the lasting influence — on Cuban language, music and culture — of Haitian laborers, brough to work the sugarcane fields and coffee plantations. At 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13, Rolando will host a free screening in the Danforth University Center. 

In the 1950s and ’60s, Gaslight Square hosted a who’s who of American entertainers — everyone from Lenny Bruce to Miles Davis to Barbra Streisand. On Thursday, Sept. 25, Washington University will pay homage to Gaslight Square with a special Jazz at Holmes concert.

Legal segregation may be over, but segregation is hardly a thing of the past. This fall, the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch “The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative.” The $1.6 million project — funded in part by a four-year, $650,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation — will examine segregation from a variety of perspectives.

​On Sept. 11 — just one week into the 2014 NFL season — running back Adrian Peterson was indicted on charges of beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch. In the uproar that followed, Peterson was suspended from professional football and pilloried by pundits left and right. Washington University in St. Louis Associate Professor Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., PhD, who writes about masculinity, performance studies and popular culture, shares his thoughts.

Cellist Kenneth Kulosa and pianist Patti Wolf launch the fall Danforth University Center Chamber Music Series on the campus of Washington University in St. Lous at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23, with the music of Sergei Rachmaninov and Igor Stravinsky.

Iver Bernstein, PhD, director of American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses this fall’s Modern Segregation lecture/workshop series in the context of recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and the “urgent need for the university to be a university.”

Playwright-in-residence Carter Lewis recommends “Good In Everything,” the new Shakespeare in the Streets adaptation of “As You Like It.” Performances are Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 18-20, in Clayton.