Arts & Culture

On Sunday, May 4, dozens of models will take the stage wearing scores of outfits by 26 aspiring designer from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Here are some highlights from the senior class.

Long before John Travolta fumbled her name at the Academy Awards, Idina Menzel was known as the star of “Wicked,” Stephen Schwartz’s musical reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz.” On April 29, the WUSTL Wind Ensemble will present excerpts from “Wicked,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Star Trek” and more in the Ballroom Theater of the 560 Music Center.

It’s the stage that launched juniors fashion. On Sunday, May 4, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will present its 85th Annual Fashion Design Show in the 560 Music Center. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza will feature dozens of models wearing scores of outfits by 26 aspiring designers.

The parent company of Commerce Bank has finalized donation of two paintings by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968), one of the most important German artists of the mid-20th century, to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.

During his 40-year career, Richard Henry Franklin has worked in every facet of architecture and mentored scores of students, architects, planners and community advocates. On Thursday, April 17, Franklin will return to Washington University in St. Louis as one of seven alumni honored at the Sam Fox School’s annual Awards for Distinction dinner.

This month marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare. From April 17-20, WUSTL’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will celebrate the Bard with a new production of “Twelfth Night,” one of his most beloved comedies, in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Los Angeles-based artist Won Ju Lim is the 2013-14 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Lim’s exhibit “Raycraft is Dead” opens today, April 11, at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

At once bouncy and philosophical, 500 Clown combines acrobatics, circus arts, commedia dell’arte and in-your-face improvisation to create a unique brand of physical, action-packed theater. On Saturday, April 12, the Chicago troupe will return to Edison with “500 Clown Trapped,” its first all-ages show.

A fuse burns, a tire rolls free. A lit candle, mounted on wheels, ignites a small explosion. In “The Way Things Go” (1987), conceptual artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss play with the idea of chain reaction. This summer, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present the groundbreaking film in “Moving Parts: Time and Motion in Contemporary Art.”

Heather Corcoran, chair of the design program in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has been named director of the school’s College & Graduate School of Art.