The art exhibit "Beauty and the Blonde: An Exploration of American Art and Popular Culture," is being presented by WUSTL's Kemper Art Museum. It is curated by Catharina Manchanda, and it includes the famous silkscreens of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe and Roy Lichtenstein's pop art images of blondes in comics.

References:

1. Jan. 19, 2008 — Blonde Ambition: Iconic Blondes Shape History in the ABC News -- Good Morning America

The January issue of Art in America includes a story on architect Fumihiko Maki, who was commissioned by WUSTL in 1960 to design Steinberg Hall as a home for the university's highly regarded art collection. Nine years ago he was selected again to design an entire arts campus, to be called the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. It opened in October. The article mentions current exhibits organized by museum director Sabine Eckmann, chief curator Lutz Koepnick, and others.

References:

1. Jan. 1, 2007 — Maki Designs Art Complex in St. Louis in the Art in America
2. Jan. 8, 2007 — Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany in the Dexigner.com

and 2 others.

In a June 19 article on the legal battle over intellectual property rights between James Joyce's grandson and various scholars, WUSTL law professor and intellectual property specialist F. Scott Kieff comments.

References:

1. June 19, 2006 — The Injustice Collector in the The New Yorker

What is creativity? Where does it come from? The workings of the creative mind have been subjected to intense scrutiny over the past 25 years by an army of researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology and neuroscience. But no one has a better overview of this mysterious mental process than WUSTL psychologist and education professor R. Keith Sawyer, author of the new book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation.
In a Time interview, Sawyer shares some of his findings and suggests ways in which we can enhance our creativity not just in art, science or business but in everyday life.

References:

1. Jan. 16, 2006 — The hidden secrets of the creative mind in the Time Magazine

The invention of the printing press didn't just make it easier to disseminate information, it made it easier to hide it, too -- as the collection of books in a vault at WUSTL shows. The books, some more than 500 years old, chronicle the history of secret codes -- some concealed so intricately that art professor Ken Botnick regularly shows them to his students. (Link also contains the text of the longer St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the collection.)

References:

1. Aug. 15, 2005 — University library's collection tells story of secret codes in the Associated Press
2. Aug. 14, 2005 — WU is home to rare coded books in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Dear Papa, Dear Hotch -- letters between Ernest Hemingway and WUSTL alum A.E. Hotchner -- will be released this fall by U. Missouri Press. Hotchner talks about his friend and his life.

References:

1. July 21, 2005 — Hemingway pal A.E. Hotchner recalls his old friend in the Associated Press

and 11 others.

A scholar has suggested that ''Laocoon,'' a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery -- possibly by Michelangelo himself.
WUSTL art history professor William Wallace comments.

References:

1. April 18, 2005 — An ancient masterpiece or a master's forgery? in the The New York Times

and 1 others.

A previously unpublished poem by Tennessee Williams, described as having been "written out of absolute, complete despair," has been discovered in his blue test booklet from a college course in 1937.
The poem has been acquired by WUSTL, where Williams, as a student in his mid-20s, plummeted into depression before fleeing the city he said he despised.
WUSTL performing arts chair Henry Schvey found the poem and test booklet last March at Faulkner House Books in New Orleans.

References:

1. April 14, 2005 — Unpublished Williams poem found in bookstore in the Associated Press

and 115 others.

Burns was on hand to discuss his new four-hour film about Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion (1908-14), due to premiere on PBS in January. Burns said that time, study and exposure to black scholars such as WUSTL professor Gerald Early, a key consultant on "Baseball," "Jazz" and now "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," have given him - and thus his company's films - a more mature understanding of race in America.

References:

1. July 21, 2004 — He pulls no punches in the Newsday

Twenty years after his death, one of Tennessee Williams' plays is seeing the light of a stage for the first time. "Me Vashya," an early play by Williams, will receive its world premiere at Washington University in St. Louis in February. Written in 1937 while Williams was a student here and known as Tom, his birth name, the play has remained in Washington University archives for more than 60 years. It has never been published or performed — until now.

References:

1. Jan. 26, 2004 — 20 years after his death, a Tennessee Williams' work is staged for the first time in the The New York Times

A program at the School of Medicine called Mini Medical School gives laypeople, from husbands and wives to lawyers and musicians, an abridged medical education that helps them to interact more effectively with health-care providers. Unlike a regular medical-school course, in which classmates share a basic knowledge of anatomy and cell biology, Mini Medical School mixes people with solid science backgrounds and people whose medical knowledge is limited to their experience on the cold end of the stethoscope.

References:

1. Jan. 23, 2004 — Mini Medical School open to all walks of life in the The New York Times

and 7 others.

Book review of Debra Dickerson's The End of Blackness by Gerald Early, author and director of WUSTL Center for the Humanities. Early writes: "With the publication of ''The End of Blackness,'' a book not only about white racism but about black people's response to it, Debra J. Dickerson joins a growing and varied class of black public intellectuals that includes people like John McWhorter, Bell Hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, Patricia Williams, Henry Louis Gates, Shelby Steele, Thulani Davis, Stanley Crouch, Greg Tate, Ellis Cose and Brent Staples. Their views are sufficiently different that they might be said to represent distinct factions among African-Americans and, no less relevant, speak to distinct factions of educated whites."

References:

1. Feb. 1, 2004 — American Skin in the The New York Times

Derek Hirst, chairman of the department of history in Arts & Sciences, reviews The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, The Man Who Measured London, by Lisa Jardine. Hooke is described as a rival to Newton. His pursuits included studying the planetary orbits, inventing and building scientific instruments, and pioneering work with microscopes.

References:

1. April 25, 2004 — You're no Isaac Newton in the The New York Times

Artist's rendering of Krysztof Wodiczko's The St. Louis Projection.

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Krzysztof Wodiczko made his reputation 20 years ago taking on big political issues. At the height of the apartheid era, he projected a swastika onto South Africa's embassy in London. In recent years, he's added audio to his multimedia projects and turned from the political to the personal. In 1998, he used audio and video projected onto the Bunker Hill Monument to tell the stories of mothers from Charlestown who'd lost children to murder. When he was invited to mount one of his projections in St. Louis by Washington University, he says he once again wanted to give voice to people who had lost loved ones to violence.

References:

1. April 16, 2004 — In St. Louis, Healing the Scars of Violence with Art in the National Public Radio's "All Things Considered"

and 42 others.