Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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.

Karen K. Butler, assistant curator at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, discusses Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945. The exhibition, which opens Jan. 25, is the first to explore Braque’s work in the years leading up to, and through, World War II.

Nominations are being accepted for Washington University’s annual Faculty Achievement Awards, known as the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award and the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award. The Compton Award is given to a distinguished member of the faculty from one of the six Danforth Campus schools and the Cori Award to a faculty member from the School of Medicine.The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, Feb. 15.