Arts & Culture

More than 5,000 St. Louisans have died during the COVID-19 pandemic. On Saturday, April 23, a community-wide memorial service, organized by WashU’s Rebecca Messbarger, will take place in Forest Park. The event will include original music, guest speakers and the ceremonial lighting of 1,500 lanterns around the waters of the Grand Basin.

Diana Montaño, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences, has won the Alfred B. Thomas Award for her book “Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City.”

In her new book, “Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in U.S. History,” R. Marie Griffith addresses the helplessness many feel around public debate, giving readers tools to listen, respond and address deep social injustices.

As longtime president of Mount Holyoke College, Mary Woolley helped to transform university education for women in the United States. In a new production of “Bull in a China Shop,” the Performing Arts Department will explore Woolley’s groundbreaking career and her decades-long relationship with Jeannette Marks, chair of Mount Holyoke’s English department.

Architecture firm KieranTimberlake will receive the Dean’s Medal for outstanding service to the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts April 21 as part of the school’s 2022 Awards for Distinction ceremony, which will be held virtually April 21.

Artists Margaux Crump, Alison McNulty and Yvonne Osei have each won the 2022 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Awards. The awards are presented by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Winners will receive $25,000 each to advance their studio practices.

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel, known for her groundbreaking, richly layered depictions of queer life and family relationships, will receive the 2022 International Humanities Prize from Washington University in St. Louis.

The WU Dance Collective, the university’s repertory dance company, will return to Edison Theatre with “Redux,” a collection of nine new and classic works by faculty, student and alumni choreographers.

For much of the last decade, DakhaBrakha has been sounding alarms at the rising tide of political violence. On Wednesday, April 13, these global ambassadors for Ukrainian culture will visit St. Louis for two appearances co-sponsored by The Sheldon and Washington University.

Architecture inspired by biology is not a new concept. But typically, “architecture has imitated the imagery of biology and nature without awareness of the underlying mechanisms,” argue Ram Dixit and Sung Ho Kim in “Cellular Transformations: Between Architecture and Biology.”