The Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts announced a roster of sixteen speakers for its spring 2019 public lecture series.

Last semester’s lecture series featured famous Chinese artist and dissident Ai Wei Wei, whose status as an international figure excited many students. The first lecture, Feb. 3, will feature conceptual artist and Washington University alumnus Michael Joo, who will be the University’s Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist for the semester.

Joo’s lecture will kick off a series of artists, architects and academics who will discuss their work over the course of the spring semester in Steinberg Hall.

“It was incredible for me as an architecture student to see the artist talking about his life experience… the lecture was fantastic, it inspired me a lot,” sophomore Sam Fox student Guorun Yang said. “For me, I would like to see [more] star architects come to our school.”

In addition to Joo, other notable speakers in the lecture series will include architect Lola Sheppard on Feb. 27, director of design for MoMA Rob Giampetro on March 2, and founding director of Wiel Arets Architecture Wiel Arets on April 20.

However, despite this extensive lineup, certain students expressed concerns about the University’s efforts to communicate with students about the lecture series.

“I just don’t think the school does that good of a job of advertising what the lectures are on,” sophomore Sam Fox student Caleb Ullendorff said. “So I don’t think you need a big name like Ai Wei Wei to get students in, you just need to get them interested in the work.”

“For me it is better if they just [focus on] getting good quality artists or interesting artists and just putting out more information because they usually just send out a list of names and that’s it,” Yang said.

Sophomore Sam Fox student Andy Entis suggested that administrators could engage students with the lecturers’ art instead of just sending out names and credentials.

“If in the email they send out, they could send out photos of all their work, that would really help,” Entis said.

In certain cases, Sam Fox students are required to attend certain lectures as part of a class. Although Ullendorff noted that he “[doesn’t] usually regret going,” students still feel that attending these lectures can add to their busy workloads.

“[Attending Sam Fox lectures] is not during our class time, so we are spending our own personal time and we have a lot of work and stress on top of that,” Yang said.

However, students still remain enthusiastic about the possibility of hearing from a variety of accomplished artists.

“[Architecture students] do turn out for big name architects like [David] Adjaye last year,” Entis said. “We want to hear from artists like that.”

All of the events are free and open to the public.

Sam Fox Director of Communications Katherine Koss Welsch did not respond to requests for comment.