Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Graduate student groups and individual leaders at Washington University in St. Louis who help “bridge the gaps” between graduate and professional students from diverse areas of study throughout WUSTL’s seven schools were recognized during a recent awards ceremony and reception. The Graduate Professional Council’s Bridging GAPS (Graduate and Professional Students) Awards Ceremony was held April 9 in the Danforth University Center’s Goldberg Formal Lounge.

The Advisory Committee for the Diversity and Inclusion Grants has awarded eight grants totaling nearly $174,000 to Washington University faculty and administrators for initiatives that improve the university environment for women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis honored seven outstanding architecture and art alumni at its fifth annual Awards for Distinction dinner April 26. The awards recognized graduates who have demonstrated creativity, innovation, leadership and vision through their contributions to the practices of art, architecture and design, as well as to Washington University and the Sam Fox School. In addition, architect Juhani Pallasmaa of Helsinki, Finland, received the Dean’s Medal.

What is the American Dream’s role in today’s society? Experts from Washington University in St. Louis will explore this question in a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus. Panelists are Steven Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences; Carter W. Lewis, playwright-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences; and Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School.

In his latest book, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012), sociologist Richard Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. On Wednesday, April 18, Sennett will lecture on “The Architecture of Cooperation” for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

“As a designer, you want to make your statement,” says Jennifer Ingram, the W. H. Smith Visiting Assistant Professor of Fashion in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. “You want to inspire, you want to motivate, you want to communicate some type of emotion.” Those ambitions and more will be on full display Sunday, April 29, when Leaving a Legacy, the Sam Fox School’s 83rd annual Fashion Design Show, takes to the runway at Plaza Frontenac.

From the galleries of New York to the backlots of Hollywood, visual culture in the United States is often defined as coastal and urban. Yet historically, large numbers of artists and designers have emerged from the unique population, landscape and economy of the American Midwest. On April 12 and 13, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will investigate Midwestern cultural production with Inland Symposium: CST, the third annual Inland Visual Studies Center symposium.

Mike Peters, the 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning and creator of the award-winning cartoon strip Mother Goose & Grimm, has been selected to give the 2012 Commencement address at Washington University in St. Louis, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. The university’s 151st Commencement will begin at 8:30 a.m. Friday, May 18, in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus. Peters earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from WUSTL in 1965.

Fracture, fragmentation and juxtaposition. Over the course of the 20th century, such modernist techniques would become defining traits of both popular and avant-garde film, which in turn would profoundly influence the work of the contemporary British artist John Stezaker. Later this month, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic films — all selected by Stezaker himself — as part of its Fringe Figure Film Series.

As a young child, Josef Albers watched his handyman father paint houses. He grew up to become a famous artist, studying color and reducing images to their simplest shapes. On March 31, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host its spring Community Day, a free afternoon of all-ages activities. Events will include tours, performances, art-making and a reading from the children’s book An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers.