One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, Missouri 63130
United States
samfoxschool@wustl.edu
The urban environment is woven from many threads—ecology and geography, but also hidden social patterns. As both a landscape designer and public artist, Walter Hood creates ecologically sustainable environments that also tease out local histories and speak to the aspirations of marginalized communities.
This fall, the MacArthur “Genius” fellow will discuss his practice—which encompasses city parks and museum grounds as well as traffic islands, vacant lots, freeway underpasses and other neglected spaces—for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
Titled “Hybrid Landscapes,” Hood’s September 26 talk is presented as part of the Sam Fox School’s fall public lecture series and as part of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s “In Conversation” series. Other events will feature artist Jamal Cyrus and curator Stephanie Weissberg (October 7), illustrator and comics artist Eleanor Davis (October 22), Deborah Berke, dean of the Yale School of Architecture (October 26), Holocaust scholar Michael Rothberg (November 14), and artist Mika Rottenberg (November 18), among others.
Combined, the two series will include 20 virtual presentations by nationally and internationally renowned speakers.
“In Conversation”
The Kemper Art Museum’s “In Conversation” series will present lectures by WashU’s Geoff Ward, professor of African and African-American Studies in Arts & Sciences and curator of the Teaching Gallery exhibition Truths and Reckonings: The Art of Transformative Racial Justice (September 29); by art historian Alexander Alberro of Barnard College, joined by Meredith Malone, associate curator at the Kemper Art Museum, and WashU’s Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, the Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences (October 10); by the Sam Fox School’s Constance Vale and Shantel Blakely (November 7); and by Rothberg (November 14). The latter talk is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and the university’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity.
The “In Conversation” series also featured a Q&A on September 12 with Natilee Harren, assistant professor at the University of Houston School of Art, and Malone. Their talk was held in conjunction with the exhibition Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959–1965, curated by Malone.
Other highlights
Architect Margarita Jover, co-founder of the Barcelona-based firm aldayjover architecture, will discuss strategies for mitigating and reversing socioecological crises on October 12. Other architectural speakers will include Robert McCarter (October 15), Robert Kahn (November 16), Eric Mumford (December 3), and Shantel Blakely (December 7). Visual arts speakers will include Silas Munro (October 28), Corey Escoto (November 3), and Vanessa German (November 11).
In addition, the Sam Fox School’s College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design will host a pair of roundtables—about architectural history and academia, and about architectural history and diversity, respectively—as part of its “Discussions in Architectural History and Theory” series September 30 and October 28.
Fall 2020 speakers
All events are free, open to the public, and presented online. RSVP required.
September 12: Natilee Harren / September 26: Walter Hood / September 29: Geoff Ward / September 30: Panel discussion: Barry Bergdoll, Beatriz Colomina, Arindam Dutta, & Joan Ockman / October 7: Jamal Cyrus & Stephanie Weissberg / October 10: Alexander Alberro / October 12: Margarita Jover / October 15: Robert McCarter / October 22: Eleanor Davis / October 26: Deborah Berke / October 28: Panel Discussion: Luis Esteban Carranza, Mario Gooden, Mary McLeod, & Patricia Morton / October 28: Silas Munro / November 3: Corey Escoto / November 7: Constance Vale & Shantel Blakely / November 11: Vanessa German / November 14: Michael Rothberg / November 16: Robert Kahn / November 18: Mika Rottenberg / December 3: Eric Mumford / December 7: Shantel Blakely
Learn more about programs in art, architecture, and design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis here.
Learn more about programs at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum here.
