Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
An integral part of the Sam Fox School, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is one of the nation’s leading university art museums, serving as a center of cultural and intellectual life for Washington University and the broader community.
Ai Weiwei: Bare Life at the Kemper Art Museum, 2019. Photo: Virginia Harold.
Nationally accredited with an internationally renowned collection, the Kemper Art Museum is located directly adjacent to student studio spaces. With some 8,700 artworks in its collection, the Museum has especially strong holdings of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art and a growing diversity of international art. The Museum’s active exhibition program presents the work of important contemporary artists as well as historical art in thought-provoking thematic explorations of issues relevant to today’s world. Public lectures, panels, gallery talks, and performances provide a range of ways to delve deeper into the art, and the Art on Campus program brings site-specific installations by distinguished artists to campus.
The Kemper Art Museum embraces the idea that visual literacy and critical thinking are fundamental aspects of education, and it is dedicated to creating transformative learning experiences. Students are welcome to visit the Museum to sketch, grab a coffee, attend public programs, or just experience the art. Free student memberships allow even greater access, from exhibition previews to members-only programs, and special opportunities for students provide the chance for deeper engagement, including the student educator and education internship programs.
What’s on View at the Museum?
Exhibitions
Design Agendas explores a remarkably destructive, creative, dynamic, and conflicted time in St. Louis’s architectural and urban history.
Upcoming Events at the Museum
Jan 9, 2025 at 7:30pm • Kemper Art Museum
Possessing a “mighty lyric voice” (The New York Times) “with a burly, burnished tone capable of striking nuance and color” (Washington Post), Drama Desk Award–nominated baritone Justin Austin is the recipient of the 2024 Marian Anderson Vocal Award and is the winner of the Rising Star category of the 2024 International Opera Awards.
World-renowned baritone Justin Austin will reprise a program he debuted at Carnegie Hall in March 2024. He curated this arrangement of songs in response to the often-heard phrase “Don’t Be Angry!,” highlighting irony, dissidence and rage. It includes music by Kurt Weill (Three Penny Opera), Olaf Bienert, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Robert Owens, and poems by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Tucholsky, Walt Whitman, and Langston Hughes among others. Austin will be joined in conversation with Sabine Eckmann, William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator, to discuss this captivating program and the accompanying exhibition on view in the Teaching Gallery that explores artists’ responses to social inequities, including war, political corruption, class struggle, and racism.
Justin Austin, Baritone
Gail Hintz, Piano
Support
This event is part of the “Belonging in Opera” series. In spring 2021 WashU’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, in partnership with WashU’s Department of Music and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, began a multi-year exploration of race and opera through scholarly conversations; exchanges between composers, performers, researchers, and arts administrators; and performances by some of the world’s preeminent contemporary musicians. The aim of the series is to gain unique insights into the ways in which race and ethnicity have shaped the history of opera and are animating its future.