Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

First Stage Competition entry, 1947The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial — popularly known as the St. Louis Gateway Arch — is the tallest monument in the United States and an icon of modern architecture, its great steel arc embodying strength, elegance and simplicity. Yet creation of the Arch was anything but simple. This spring the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will explore that complex history with the exhibition and symposium On the Riverfront: St. Louis and The Gateway Arch. Held in conjunction with Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, On the Riverfront will focus on the people, events and conditions that culminated in the 1947-48 competition from which Eero Saarinen’s design was chosen, as well as the monument’s subsequent construction and its place in American architecture.

Karen Butler, Ph.D., has been appointed assistant curator for collections at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The appointment is effective January 2, 2009. Butler is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Matisse Studies at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA, where she also serves as an adjunct lecturer in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interests are early- and mid-20th-century American and European art — areas in which the Kemper Art Museum has particularly strong holdings.

The Gateway Arch is an icon of modern architecture and the most-recognized symbol of the City of St. Louis. Yet in many ways the Arch is cut-off from the city proper, sandwiched between the Mississippi Riverfront and a network of converging roadways and interstates. Last month students from five Missouri and Illinois universities gathered to address this challenge as part of the St. Louis Downtown/Riverfront Student Design Charrette.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic Hollywood films as part of its “Some Like it Cool” film series Dec. 9-11. Held in conjunction with the exhibition “Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury,” the festival will feature screenings of “Rebel Without a Cause” Tuesday, Dec. 9; “Anatomy […]

United States Jefferson National Expansion MemorialEero Saarinen (1910-1961) was among the most prolific, unorthodox and controversial architects of the 20th century, creator of the monumental St. Louis Gateway Arch as well as sweepingly abstract terminals for New York’s John F. Kennedy International and Washington’s Dulles International airports. In January the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first retrospective to explore the complete career of the acclaimed Finnish American architect.

Rendering of renovated children’s theater.A team of six graduate and undergraduate architecture students — led by graduate teaching assistant Ellen Leuenberger and including Denny Burke, Alexander Harner, Michael Heller, Rachel Kerr and June Kim — has won the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Community Service Competition. The competition, which includes a $300 cash prize, centered on an abandoned 8,000-square-foot children’s theater located on the campus of St. Francis de Sales church, 2653 Ohio Ave. (63118), popularly known as “the Cathedral of South St. Louis.”

Courtesy PhotoThis fall, five teams of architecture students have worked to create redevelopment plans for an abandoned children’s theater located on the campus of a south St. Louis historic church.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic Hollywood films as part of its Some Like it Cool film series Dec. 9, 10 and 11. Held in conjunction with the exhibition Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, the festival will feature screenings of Rebel Without a Cause (Dec. 9), Anatomy of a Murder (Dec. 10) and North by Northwest (Dec. 11).

Eric CesalSt. Francis de Sales church, popularly known as “the Cathedral of South St. Louis,” has been a local landmark since the end of the Civil War, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. This fall five teams of architecture students have worked to create redevelopment plans for an abandoned children’s theater, located on the church’s six-building campus, as part of the Sam Fox School’s Community Service Competition. Winners of the competition will be announced Oct. 17 at a reception in Givens Hall.

The phrase “modern art” has been widely used for more than a century. In that time, it has become so associated with historical movements — from cubism and surrealism to abstract expressionism, pop and conceptual art — that it has ceased to describe the many new and different forms being made today. So argues Terry […]