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

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in Japanese manga, or comic books, in the United States, yet Korean comics remain relatively unknown. This fall, the WUSTL's Kemper Art Museum will present Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames, a rare U.S. exhibition of work from both North and South Korea.
The exhibition provides a decade-by-decade glimpse of the evolving social realities in contemporary Korea, as depicted in comics ranging from popular children's entertainment to aggressive forms of political commentary.

References:

1. Aug. 9, 2007 — Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in the ArtDaily.org

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.

The architect Fumihiko Maki, commissioned to create a United Nations expansion as well as the new Tower 4 at the World Trade Center site, has designed two new buildings for the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. The Fox School of Design and Visual Arts also is the home of Maki's very first commission.

References:

1. July 25, 2006 — Arts, Briefly in the The New York Times

The new Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University will open to the public Oct. 25, the university is expected to announce on Monday. The museum, the centerpiece of a $56.8 million, five-building complex devoted to art and architecture, was built on the site of a former parking lot near the corner of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards.

References:

1. July 16, 2006 — Washington U. museum is set to open Oct. 25 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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

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.