Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Lorser Feitelson, *Dichotomic Organization*From painting and architecture to music, film, furniture and the graphic arts, 1950s Los Angeles was an epicenter of American modernism. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, a sprawling multimedia exhibition that investigates how the sleek West Coast aesthetic — at once playful and poised, laid-back and sharply articulated — emerged as cultural shorthand for crisp sophistication.

Karl Benjamin, *Black Pillars,* 1957.From retail furnishings to international auction houses, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in midcentury modernism, an influential design aesthetic that flourished between the mid-1930s and the mid-1960s. During the 2008-09 academic year the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will host two major exhibitions exploring both the breadth and the cultural impact of midcentury modernism, through such mediums as painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, film, music and the graphic arts.

Ronald Leax, the Halsey Cooley Ives Professor of Art, has been named dean of art, according to Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Leax will lead the College of Art and the Graduate School of Art. The one-year appointment will begin July 1. Leax will succeed dean Jeff Pike, who is the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr., Professor in Art. Pike has served as dean of art since 1999. He will return to full-time teaching following a sabbatical year.

Ronald Leax, the Halsey Cooley Ives Professor of Art, has been named dean of art, according to Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Leax will lead the College of Art and the Graduate School of Art, succeeding Jeff Pike, the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professor in Art.

Photo by Joe AngelesOver the last several months, a group of architecture students have designed two projects to help rebuild neighborhoods and communities in New Orleans.

St. Thomas Seven Pepper Hot Sauce is one of the hottest pepper sauces in New Orleans, grown and bottled at God’s Vineyard Community Garden, 918 Felicity St. Yet like much of the city, this nonprofit farm was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina. Over the last several months a group of St. Louis architecture students have collaborated with garden founders Earl Antwine and Noel Jones to reestablish God’s Vineyard by designing, building and installing a new chicken coop. At the same time, the students also have been working with the Good Work Network on redevelopment plans for the Franz Building, located at 2016 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. The latter project was recently named a finalist in the 2008 JP Morgan Chase Community Development Competition.

This summer, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will join other local institutions in celebrating the life and work of neoclassical sculptor Harriet Goodhue Hosmer with a special exhibition on view May 2 through July 21.

Harriet Hosmer, *Oenone* (1854-55)Neoclassical sculptor Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830-1908) was one of the most successful women artists of her day, described by the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning as “a perfectly emancipated female.” She was also the first woman to study anatomy at what would become the Washington University School of Medicine and produced many of her most significant works — such as the bronze statue of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton in Lafayette Park — for St. Louis patrons. This summer the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will join other local institutions in celebrating Hosmer’s life and work with a special Teaching Gallery exhibition, on view May 2 to July 21.

Courtesy PhotoBeginning May 2, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape,” an exhibition of close to 40 works by leading Barbizon figures and by later French and American artists who were influenced by the school.

New York architect Nikole Renee Bouchard has won Washington University’s 2008 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition. The biennial competition, sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, 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.