Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

In the decades following the Second World War, European and American artists developed a wide range of strategies and approaches to abstract painting and sculpture. This summer, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Gesture, Scrape, Combine, Calculate: Postwar Abstraction from the Permanent Collection, showcasing more than a dozen large-scale yet rarely seen works that span gestural and lyrical abstraction, color-field painting, hard-edge abstraction and assemblage.

Internationally acclaimed photographer Joe Deal, who served as dean of Washington University’s School of Art from 1989-99, died in hospice Friday, June 18, in Providence, RI, following a long struggle with cancer. He was 62.

Film and photography are in many ways defined by the tensions between them: narrative vs. static, still vs. moving images. This summer, in conjunction with the exhibition Focus on Photography, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present a pair of feature-length films, Andy Warhol and In the Land of the War Canoes, that highlight connections between the two media.

Internationally acclaimed silversmith Heikki Seppä, professor emeritus in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art’s College of Art, died Tuesday, May 18, at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash. He was 83. One of the most innovative and influential silversmiths of the latter 20th century, Seppä helped introduce the technique of reticulation to the United States while also developing and popularizing new methods for shaping sheet metal into three-dimensional shell structures.

John Witty, the Record‘s 2010 Outstanding Graduate in Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has studied the Renaissance and could be called a bit of a Renaissance man. He’ll earn a bachelor of fine arts in printmaking from the Sam Fox School with majors in art history and German, both in Arts & Sciences.

Toronto architect Nevena Krilic has won Washington University’s 2010 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. Sponsored by the College of Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the biennial competition is open to young architects from around the world and carries a $30,000 first place award to support study and research abroad — the largest such award in the United States.  

The International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) has awarded 11 faculty members — university professors undertaking innovative and collaborative research in the broad areas of bioenergy and sustainability — grants totaling nearly $300,000.

Senior Daniel DuGoff (left) surrounds senior Eleanor Ryburn with his book at the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Studio for the Illustrated Book Open House May 4. The studio — where students learn hand-sewn bookbinding, traditional letterpress and alternative print processes, and publication design — is a collaboration between the College of Art and University Libraries.

Tegan Bukowski came to WUSTL to “explore the world, to discover problems and to produce solutions,” say Bruce Lindsey, dean of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration. Bukowski, who will receive a dual degree in architecture and environmental studies May 21, has been chosen by the Record as an Outstanding Graduate in architecture.

St. Louis fashion lovers packed Holmes Lounge May 1 for Fashion & Flash, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 81st Annual Fashion Design Show. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza featured dozens of models wearing scores of outfits — ranging from coats and cocktail dresses to sportswear, dress groups and ballgowns — by 13 junior and senior fashion majors.