Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Two new interdisciplinary exective education courses bring together experts from across the Danforth Campus to explore emerging concepts that will impact the future of industries, economies and the environment. The two-day and three-day seminars will take place near the end of October.

Public art is a tricky beast. Sometimes you get the Gateway Arch or Citygarden or Laumeier Sculpture Park. Sometimes you don’t. The key is integration, says Leslie Markle, who recently joined the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum as its inaugural curator for public art.

Take a deep breath. Smooth your brow. Raise your hands and stomp your feet. It’s time to talk about art. Welcome to Kemper Art Reaches Everyone (KARE), a new arts engagement program designed for people with early-onset to moderate Alzheimer’s.

Painter and poet Edward Boccia, professor emeritus of art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, died Monday, Sept. 3, in his home in Webster Groves, from pneumonia. He was 91.

Good design can be many things: a book, a poster, a smart phone. But increasingly, designers are being asked not only to create objects, but to address large-scale social problems, from poverty to sustainability to eating disorders. In September, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch its fall Public Lecture Series with two speakers, Jon Kolko and Cynthia E. Smith, who are rethinking the role of contemporary design.

WUSTL’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and Tarlton Corporation will build a sample “intelligent house” next to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Aug. 18. The project comes as part of preparations for Design with the Other 90%: CITIES, a major survey exhibition illustrating the profound, transformative and sometimes lifesaving power of innovative design.

Solar lanterns. Bicycle-powered cell phone chargers. A personal water-purifier the size of a large straw. Today, some of the world’s most creative, challenging and sophisticated design is found not in museums or showrooms, but in the poor, makeshift urban settlements that collectively house nearly a billion people. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Design with the Other 90%: CITIES, a major survey that aims to expand contemporary definitions of just what constitutes “good design.”

Three local arts organizations will team up to host Contemporary Night Out, an evening of short, informative programs focusing on the world of contemporary art. The free event, which takes place from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2, will begin at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, then proceed to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in Grand Center before ending next door at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Each stop will feature food and drinks as well as a short interactive presentation.

As a medium, drawing lends itself to the theoretical and experimental. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Notations: Contemporary Drawing as Idea and Process, an exhibition of more than 60 Minimalist, Conceptual and Post-Minimalist works by 39 artists, dating from the late 1950s to today. Drawn primarily from the renowned collection of Sally and Wynn Kramarsky, the exhibition focuses on practices that emerged during the postwar period — a time of great innovation in drawing — yet which continue to influence contemporary practitioners.

Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has named Peter MacKeith its Honorary Consul for Missouri, in St. Louis. MacKeith, associate dean and associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has long worked to deepen cultural and educational relations between Finland and the United States, particularly in the fields of architecture, education and design. Finnish Ambassador Ritva Jolkkonen inaugurated McKeith during a visit to campus June 21 and 22.