Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Marcel Duchamp was among the most influential artists of the 20th century. He was also a dedicated chess player who saw strong correlations between his art and the game. On Oct. 14 the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis will present “Playing with Chance: Duchamp, Chess and Roulette,” a gallery talk and exhibition match combining the ultimate game of strategy with the ultimate game of chance.

*Night Watch #3* (2007) by Roger ShimomuraCelebrated artist Roger Shimomura, whose paintings and performances wittily explore issues of culture, discrimination and ethnic stereotypes, will discuss his work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12. Shimomura’s lecture is held in conjunction with the semester-long series “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” organized by the Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values.

John CageSince the early 20th century avant-garde writers, artists and composers have championed the creative possibilities of the arbitrary and the accidental. Next week the Department of Music and the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department, both in Arts & Sciences, along with the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a concert exploring the use of chance in modern and contemporary music. The performance — held in conjunction with the exhibition Chance Aesthetics, now on view at the Kemper Art Museum — is free and open to the public and begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall.

Michael Adams, M.D., and Gyo Obata explore the impact of Japanese internment camps in World War II on their respective families on Oct. 2.

The new Living Learning Center at Tyson Research Center was designed to be one of the greenest buildings in North America. Jonathan Chase, associate professor of biology in the Department of Biology and Environmental Studies in Arts & Sciences and Tyson’s director; and Daniel Hellmuth, principal and co-founder of Hellmuth & Bicknese Architects, L.L.C., will deliver a talk about the Center and its challenges for the Assembly Series at 5 p.m. Thursday, September 24 in Wilson Hall Room 214. The program is free and open to the public.

In the 1930s, the photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous “war relocation centers” at which the U.S. government forcibly interred approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Next month their sons, Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, will explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public dialog at Washington University.

Courtesy ImageBeginning Friday, Sept. 18, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “Metabolic City,” an exhibition surveying work by 1960s avant-garde artists and architects.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum presents “Chance Aesthetics,” a major loan exhibition investigating the use of chance as a key compositional principle in modern art. The exhibit opens with a reception at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 and remains on view through Jan. 4, 2010.

Four years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita led to devastating floods, the city of New Orleans still lacks a comprehensive plan for dealing with water, argues Derek Hoeferlin, a senior lecturer in the College and Graduate School of Architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Hoeferlin has led a series of Post-hurricane architecture and urban design studios, including most recently Gutter to Gulf, which explores spatial strategies for a potential water plan. He outlined his views in an Aug. 30 commentary for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and is available for further discussion of planning and recovery issues.

World-renowned artist and computer scientist John Maeda will serve as opening speaker for “Economies: Art Architecture,” the first joint conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and the National Council of Art Administrators. The conference, which takes place Nov. 4-7, will be hosted by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. In conjunction with the event, the Sam Fox School and the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies are collaborating to present three Skandalaris Awards in art and design.