Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will honor six outstanding architecture and art alumni at its second annual Awards for Distinction dinner April 23. Recipients will include Ralph Cunningham (BA 1983), Ann Fertig Freedman (BFA 1971), Tom Friedman (BFA 1988) and Harry C. Kendall (BA 1978). In addition, Sara Velas (BFA 1999) will receive the 2009 Young Alumni Award. Judy Pfaff (FA71) will receive the Dean’s Medal for distinguished service to the school.

Rirkrit Tiravanija creates spare yet provocative installations designed to blur lines between art and life, transforming galleries and museums into ephemeral social spaces for cooking meals, playing music and hanging out. Beginnin in May the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will showcase one recent project with its exhibition Rirkrit Tiravanija: Chew the Fat, a multifaceted video installation that together profiles a loose-knit group of 12 internationally known artists.

Photo by Mary ButkusFashion is fun, challenging, inspiring and everywhere. It is also hard work. On Sunday, March 29, 11 seniors and seven juniors from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts — home to the nation’s oldest four-year fashion design program — will present the fruit of their labors in the school’s 80th Annual Fashion Design Show Sunday.

Fashion is fun, challenging, inspiring and everywhere. It is also hard work. Next week 11 seniors and seven juniors from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, home to the nation’s oldest four-year fashion design program, will present the fruit of their labors in the school’s 80th Annual Fashion Design Show at Lumière Place Casino & Hotels.

SpectorFranklin “Buzz” Spector, professor and former chair of the Department of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has been named dean of the College and Graduate School of Art, both part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Spector also will hold the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professorship of Art. The appointment, effective July 1, was announced by Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.

W.J.T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Art History and English at the University of Chicago, will speak on “The Future of the Image” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, in the Etta Eiseman Steinberg Auditorium as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring lecture series. An award-winning teacher, scholar and theorist of media, art and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology—the study of images across the media.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will launch its spring 2009 concert series, “Kemper Presents,” at 6 p.m. Feb. 27 with Theodore, a foursome that creates a rootsy, familiar yet completely fresh sound with instruments as diverse as the trombone, glockenspiel, accordion and lap steel guitar. Designed to highlight the talents and diversity of contemporary […]

Courtesy Photo-Jefferson National Expansion Memorial ArchivesThe Jefferson National Expansion Memorial — popularly known as the St. Louis Gateway Arch — is 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 an exhibition “On the Riverfront: St. Louis and The Gateway Arch.“

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University will host Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first retrospective to explore the complete career of the acclaimed Finnish- American architect. The exhibit will remain on view at the Kemper Museum through April 27. A second exhibition, On the Riverfront: St. Louis and the Gateway Arch, highlights the history of the St. Louis waterfront and includes selected submissions from the 1947 competition, including Saarinen’s own entry, subsequent drawings and models, on view in Steinberg Hall through March 9.

Theodore brings experimental folk to the Kemper Art Museum on Feb. 27.The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will launch its spring 2009 concert series, “Kemper Presents,” on Feb. 27 with Theodore, a foursome that creates a rootsy, familiar yet completely fresh sound with instruments as diverse as the trombone, glockenspiel, accordion and lap steel guitar.