Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced the program and featured participants for the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7. In addition to President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, Stephen Colbert, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and WUSTL’s Michael Sherraden are among the featured speakers.

Does art have a moral duty to be politically engaged? On Thursday, March 7, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will explore that question and more with “Committed Culture: A Panel Discussion on Politics and Aesthetics During World War II.”

In architecture and the visual arts, there is a long tradition of site-specific projects and temporary installations informing subsequent development. Now The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have launched PXSTL, a national competition exploring the critical role of the arts and culture in building vital and dynamic communities.

New faculty members have joined the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

In the early 20th century, utopian conviction about the promise of artistic abstraction was widespread. And yet, in the years between the World Wars, the human figure remained the site of significant artistic activity. So argues John Klein, associate professor of art history and archaeology, in Face and Figure in European Art, 1928-1945, now on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Sustainability and economic growth: two desirable goals which should demonstrably complement one another, especially in our cities. But how? On Feb. 21, the Sam Fox School and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will present The Innovative Metropolis, a daylong symposium (and web simulcast) on fostering economic competitiveness through sustainable urban design.

Renowned author and art historian Udo Kultermann, who taught architecture at WUSTL for nearly 30 years, died Feb. 9, 2013, in New York City, following a long illness. He was 85.

Eric Hoffman, professor of practice in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has won a national 2013 Young Architects Award from the American Institute of Architects. Hoffman is both the first Sam Fox School faculty member and the first Sam Fox School alumnus to receive the honor, among the highest available to architects in the early stages of their careers.

With its fractured spaces and multiple viewpoints, Cubism marked a radical break fromWestern painting’s long tradition of naturalistic depiction. But even Cubism had its influences — among them, the visual techniques of early cinema. In February, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and KDHX Media Arts will help contemporary filmmakers return the favor with the Kemper Braque Film Challenge.

At a reading speed of 250 words per minute, it would take the average adult almost three full days (without sleep or bathroom breaks) to complete J.K. Rowling’s mammothly popular Harry Potter series. Now you can do it in 70 minutes flat, thanks to Potted Potter, which comes to Edison Theatre Feb. 15.