Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Scaphocephalus. The word refers to a condition in which the shape of the skull is markedly long and narrow. At the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, the word is tattooed onto a 19th-century exemplar, neat cursive script fading into aged bone. Over the past several years, Patricia Olynyk, director of the Graduate School of Art, has both detailed and interrogated the Mutter exhibits through a series of large lightbox photographs.

The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis: Derek Hoeferlin; Irena Knezevic; Seng Kuan, PhD; Gary J. Patti, PhD; and Monika Weiss.

Internationally acclaimed architect Craig Dykers, whose recent projects include the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the former World Trade Center site in New York, will chair the jury for Washington University’s 2012 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. Sponsored biennially by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the competition is open to young architects from around the world and carries a first-place award of $50,000 — one of the largest competition prizes in the United States.

The McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis welcomed 12 new talented graduate and professional students for the 2011-12 academic year. The new scholars are graduates of one of 27 premier universities from around the world partnered with WUSTL in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service is accepting nominations for the Civic Scholars program, which recognizes Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate students who exemplify future potential for civic leadership. Nominate a current sophomore by Friday, Feb. 3, by filling out a brief form on https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CivicScholarsNominationForm.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Public Lecture Series presents free weekly lectures by nationally and internationally recognized artists, architects, historians and critics. This spring, the Public Lecture Series — which begins Jan. 20 — will feature talks by Hungarian installation artist Balázs Kicsiny and by architect Craig Dykers, whose firm, Snøhetta, designed the National 911 Memorial Pavillion in New York. Other highlights will include lectures by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, New York illustrator Jessica Hische and art historian Susan Laxton.

The army, the circus and the restaurant: three diverse institutions, each embodying distinct ideas about the nature of service. In Killing Time, Hungarian installation artist Balázs Kicsiny both investigates and conflates these institutions and their raisons d’être: to protect or kill, to entertain, and to feed. Beginning Friday, Jan. 27, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Killing Time, Kicsiny’s newest work and his first U.S. museum exhibition, developed while in residence with the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts as the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist.

There is an undeniable romanticism to the sculpture of Patrick Dougherty. Working with the simplest of materials — sticks, branches and saplings — the North Carolina-based artist creates playful architectural forms that variously suggest nests, primitive shelters and fairy-tale castles. This fall, Dougherty enlisted dozens of students to help construct Double or Nothing, a new commission for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

In a culture defined by an indiscriminate onslaught of images, John Stezaker’s work conveys both a fascination with their lure and a critique of their seductive power. Using classic movie stills, vintage postcards, book illustrations and other found materials, the contemporary British artist brings new meanings to old pictures, adjusting, inverting and slicing them together to create collages that are at once captivating and unsettling, eerie and elegant, nostalgic and absurd. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will provide the only U.S. venue for John Stezaker, the artist’s first major solo museum exhibition.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will host a dedicaiton for a new, as-yet-untitled work by internationally known artist Patrick Dougherty at noon Monday, Nov. 21, on the south lawn of Givens Hall. The large woven-wood sculpture was designed and completed as part of a master class Dougherty led for students in architecture, landscape architecturea and the visual arts. The piece will remain on view through fall 2013.