Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

The Center for the Humanities and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have announced the first recipients of Faculty Collaborative Grants. Presented under the auspices of The Divided City, a new urban humanities initiative, the awards are funded in part by a four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research has announced the eight winners of the 2014 University Research Strategic Alliance (URSA) grants. The URSA program aims to encourage new groups of investigators working on new research or using new approaches to solve problems.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch its spring Public Lecture Series with talks by architect Javier Maroto (Jan. 26) and artist Carrie Mae Weems (Feb. 2). Weems is a 2013 recipient of the MacArthur “genius award.” Her “Untitled (Colored People Grid)” recently was acquired by the university’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

For Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, drawing is both an expressive art and a daily practice. At the office or in the studio, a sketchbook is always near at hand.

During the 1950s and ’60s, international abstraction played a crucial role in Cold War cultural politics. In St. Louis, Washington University emerged as one of the nation’s most important regional centers for postwar abstract art — in large part thanks to the efforts of curator William N. Eisendrath Jr. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will pay homage with “From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960-68.” 

Listening is a talent but also a skill. This spring, Andrew Raimist and Bob Hansman, both architecture faculty in Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will lead “Community Building II: Ferguson,” a community studies class that explores the complex economic, political and racial landscape of north St. Louis.

Jeigh Singleton, associate professor emeritus of fashion design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, died Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015, following a long battle with cancer. He was 70.

“Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.” opens Friday, Jan. 23, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The large-scale installation consists of 30 minimalist sculptures, each appropriating the form of an existing monument to white and Indian victims killed between the 17th century and the end of the so-called Indian Wars in 1890.

In 2014, Washington University continued to play a major role in the St. Louis community while students and alumni made their mark on campus. Among the stories were the debut of the $80 million Lofts of Washington University, a continued investment in Cortex, the innovation district, and two unforgettable alumni.

It’s one of the most recognizable buildings in St. Louis, a former department store once known for lush holiday displays. Today, the Railway Exchange sits empty, but architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis have spent much of the last semester exploring adaptive reuse alternatives for the 1.2 million-square-foot structure.