Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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.

Amidst the cultural and political ferment of the 1960s, avant-garde artists and architects began embracing biological and scientific models as well as the potentials of emerging technologies to explore radical new directions in urban design, developing projects that were at once fanciful, complex and conceptually serious. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Metabolic City, an exhibition surveying work by the British collective Archigram; the Japanese Metabolists (whose members include Fumihiko Maki, architect of the Kemper Art Museum); and the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, an early member of the Situationist International.

Ethnic profiling is illegal in the United States, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for searches and seizures, and by the Fourteenth Amendment, which calls for equal protection under the law. And yet as the recent arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates demonstrates, the issue remains far from settled. This fall Washington University in St. Louis will present “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” a semester-long series exploring the history, impact and ethical issues surrounding ethnic profiling through lectures, readings, performances, panel discussions and other events.

This fall, Washington University will present “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” a semester-long series exploring the history, impact and ethical issues surrounding ethnic profiling through lectures, readings, performances, panel discussions and other events.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has received a $50,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. to support the exhibition “Sharon Lockhart — Lunch Break.” Organized by Sabine Eckmann, Ph.D., director and chief curator of the Kemper Art Museum, the exhibition will open Feb. 10, 2010, and remain on view […]

Dripping or flinging paint; flipping coins to compose musical scores; letting the progressive decay of organic materials determine a composition — since the early 20th century avant-garde artists have used these processes and many others to explore the creative possibilities of chance and its attendant release of authorial intent. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Chance Aesthetics, a major loan exhibition investigating the use of chance as a key compositional principle in modern art.