WHAT: 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 who designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch. 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. A daylong symposium of the same title will take place Jan. 31.
WHERE: The Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is located on WUSTL’s Danforth Campus, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Steinberg Hall is situated immediately adjacent to the Kemper Art Museum.
WHEN: 7-9 p.m. opening with reception Friday, Jan. 30. Free and open to the public.
SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS: Jan. 31 symposium is set for 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and following, attendees may tour the exhibitions. The symposium will feature an array of distinguished architects, scholars, critics and historians including:
• Charles Birnbaum, founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation and former coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative
• Robert Burley, founding principal of The Burley Partnership in Waitsfield, Vt.; headed the design team for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial while working at the firm of Eero Saarinen and Associates
• Matti Häkkänen, former ambassador of Finland and second cousin to Eero Saarinen
• Peter MacKeith, associate dean and associate professor of architecture in WUSTL’s Sam Fox School, an authority on contemporary Finnish and Nordic architecture, and co-curator of On the Riverfront: St. Louis and the Gateway Arch
• Eric Mumford, WUSTL associate professor of architecture, history and art history; architectural and urban design historian; and co-curator of On the Riverfront: St. Louis and the Gateway Arch
• Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, assistant professor at the Yale School of Architecture and chief researcher and co-editor for the exhibition catalog to Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future
• Susan Saarinen, daughter of Eero and Lily Saarinen and principal of Saarinen Landscape Architecture in Golden, Colo.
For more information and/or to arrange a preview of the exhibitions or schedule interviews with symposium participants, contact Liam Otten at (314) 935-8494.