Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

In 2017, Washington University in St. Louis will begin one of the most significant capital projects in the recent history of the Danforth Campus: transformation of the east end.

With “Boîte-en-valise,” Marcel Duchamp created an artistic retrospective the size of a salesman’s sample case. Now the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has acquired for its permanent collection an early example of this important work by one of the 20th century’s most influential artists.

What is the relationship between art and activism? How should artists engage questions of racial justice? Have events in Ferguson changed those equations? On Oct. 3, four St. Louis-based artists will discuss these questions and more as part of the Greater St. Louis Humanities Festival.

Johannesburg is a modern global city, the second-largest in Africa. Last summer, the students and faculty in the Sam Fox School traveled there to study new efforts to overcome the legacy of apartheid design.

The Saint Louis Art Museum and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis have selected Andréa Stanislav as the 2015-16 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow.

Several Washington University in St. Louis faculty and staff members have received collaborative awards through The Divided City, an urban humanities initiative organized by the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

Art fulfills many roles. One is to start conversation. Beginning Friday, Sept. 11, and continuing throughout the fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present nearly two dozen free public events, ranging from lectures, gallery talks and panel discussions to concerts, film screenings and all-ages activities.

Weil served on the faculty for 37 years as an art historian, and his contributions as a teacher, scholar, administrator and benefactor have left an indelible mark on the university and generations of students.

Thanks to the alumni network at Washington University, Justin Au, Sam Fox School, Class of 2015, was able to spend his summer working on a music video for the popular band OK Go. The video ended up going viral.

ISSUES Magazine has won the 2015 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals from the Center of Architecture in New York. Launched in 2012, the magazine explores links between architecture, design and social issues.