Ranging from “Metabolics” in 2009 to “Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other” last year, Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has often provided a forum for avant-garde or atypical art forms. Its two new fall openings, “Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany” and “Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific,” certainly keep with this tradition.

Showing now at the main gallery of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is “Lunch Break,” a showcase of recent photographs and films by American contemporary artist Sharon Lockhart, known for her formally rich large-scale collaborations within disparate communities.

“Needle Work” (2009) by Allison Smith, located in the College of Art Gallery at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, began as a series of photographs of cloth gas masks from the early 20th century. As her interest in the masks expanded, Smith began to create and modify them herself, to the point that they were no longer functional, let alone recognizable, as masks.

“Chance Aesthetics” and “Metabolics” are two very disparate exhibitions, yet, on some level, they accomplish the same purpose.

It is one of the most famous works of art at Washington University, but its not housed at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

With the recent news that Brandeis University will be closing its Rose Art Museum, many are concerned about the future of Washington University’s Kemper Art Museum. Brandeis University is closing its art museum in an effort to alleviate some of the stress placed on the liberal arts school by the economic crisis. There appears to [...]