Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Internationally acclaimed architect Francis Kéré, winner of the 2022 Pritzker Prize, will discuss his work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts April 1. The first African architect to win the Pritzker, Kéré is known for inventive civic projects, particularly schools, that employ local labor and indigenous materials.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “Torkwase Dyson: Bird and Lava” March 22 to July 10. Anchored by a newly acquired work, the display spans painting, drawing, sculpture and animation — along with architectural models relating to Dyson’s new commission for St. Louis’ citywide public art triennial Counterpublic.

Olivia Baba and Connor Seger, both seniors pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fashion design from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, each will receive awards as part of the 2023 Fashion Scholarship Fund competition.

Large-scale redevelopment is often pitched as a strategy for reviving struggling downtowns. Yet such projects — with their acres of asphalt and tenuous connections to surrounding environs — are usually poor substitutes for the organic neighborhoods they displace, argues Patty Heyda, an associate professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

In the years after World War II, a series of global shifts, including African decolonization and the U.S. civil rights movement, led artists to explore a new politics of form, synthesizing and integrating different visual and cultural traditions. This spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “African Modernism in America,” the first traveling survey to examine the diverse aesthetic strategies, and complex relationships, between African artists and American artists, scholars, patrons and cultural organizations.

Dana Ostrander has been appointed assistant curator of modern art at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. She will begin March 13.

This Is Not My Home is the first children’s book from Eugenia Yoh, BFA ’22, and Vivienne Chang, an economics and strategy student at Olin Business School. It’s a story of a young girl coming to grips with a family’s move from Taiwan.

Kristina Grimm, BArch ’06, uses her architecture degree to cobble together a career at Reebok.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has received a $10,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

John Hendrix, a professor and founding chair of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program, was installed Jan. 26 as the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art.