With her pink suits, chippy chihuahua and Greek chorus of sorority sisters, Elle Woods seems to have it all. But when her well-bred boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, leaves UCLA for Harvard Law, Elle’s dreams for the future come crashing down. So begins “Legally Blonde,” a musical adaptation of the 2001 film, which explores themes of personal identity, social expectations and what it means to be authentic.
Learn about how poet Paul Tran and more than a dozen artists, illustrators and designers are preparing for the inauguration of Andrew D. Martin as 15th chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.
The newly expanded and renovated Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will reopen to the public Sept. 28 with “Ai Weiwei: Bare Life,” a major exhibition collecting dozens of artworks by the renowned Chinese dissident artist and activist.
Sports fandom — often more than religious, political or regional affiliation — determines how millions of Americans define themselves. In his new book, “We Average Unbeautiful Watchers: Fan Narratives and the Reading of American Sports,” Noah Cohan, lecturer in American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences, focuses on sports culture as narrative.
The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 2019 MFA in Visual Art Thesis Exhibition features work by 17 graduating students. Works in various media explore themes such as the politics of race, the role of gender, the poetics of the everyday, and utopian or dystopian futures.
Kate Smith was the “songbird of the south” and “the First Lady of radio,” a 20th-century superstar whose recording of “God Bless America” was still being played during Philadelphia Flyer and New York Yankees home games. But recently, both teams distanced themselves from Smith due to racist lyrics in a pair of her early recordings. Arts & Sciences’ Todd Decker, chair of music, helps unpack the controversy for USA Today.
Musicologist Todd Decker, of Arts & Sciences and author of “Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound After Vietnam” (2017), examines how films such as “Platoon,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Hurt Locker” shape how audiences view soldiers, veterans and the experience of war.
The newly expanded and renovated Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will reopen with a major exhibition of work by Ai Weiwei. The renowned Chinese dissident artist and activist is known all over the world for rigorous, compassionate and complex artworks that address themes of political, ethical and social urgency. “Ai Weiwei: Bare Life” opens Sept. 28 and will feature more than 35 artworks created over the last two decades in a wide variety of media — including a handful of newly conceived, large-scale and site-specific projects and major pieces never before exhibited in the United States.
Arthur Osver won international acclaim for his evocative depictions of the American city. And though his work evolved, that ramshackle topography remained part of his painterly DNA. So argues art history Professor Angela Miller in “Arthur Osver: Urban Landscape, Abstraction, and the Mystique of Place” (2019).
