Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Mark Ryan has been appointed assistant director of collections and exhibitions for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.

In a unique material investigation, architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have constructed a prototype watercraft that incorporates expanding polyurethane spray foam — a commercial product typically used for home insulation.

The Kemper Art Museum is now accepting Teaching Gallery proposals for spring 2017. The deadline for proposals is May 31. The Teaching Gallery is an exhibition space dedicated to exhibiting works from the museum’s collection with connections to university curricula.

Tumbleweeds drift past clapboard buildings. A lone rider crosses dusty mountains. A woman waits by a cabin door. In “American Night” (2009), which opens March 4 at the Kemper Art Museum, German artist Julian Rosefeldt turns an amused yet critical eye to the motifs and conventions of the Western film.

Sabine Eckmann, director of the Kemper Art Museum, has won the College Art Association’s 2016 Alfred H. Barr Award for museum scholarship.

Works by the Sam Fox School’s Patricia Olynyk will be featured in “Some Provocations from Skeptical Inquirers,” a two-person show at The Mishkin Gallery in Manhattan.

The Sam Fox School will present “Sincerely, Stone & DeGuire” at the Des Lee Gallery Jan. 22-Feb. 20. The exhibition collects more than a dozen works by the husband-and-wife artist duo, who met as undergraduate art students.

We are living at the dawn of the drone age. In January, the Kemper Art Museum will present “To See Without Being Seen: Contemporary Art and Drone Warfare.” The exhibition raises timely questions about power, technology, surveillance and fear.

Can technology be at once ubiquitous and invisible? Artist Trevor Paglen, who will speak on campus Feb. 1, deploys photography, sculpture, engineering and investigative journalism to document drones, satellites, fiber-optic cables and other “hidden” systems.

Six members of the Washington University in St. Louis faculty have been honored with 2015 Emerson Electric Co. “Excellence in Teaching” awards.