Cut & Paste — Brent R. Benjamin

After years of twists and turns, the twentysomething St. Louis band sit on the eve of its major label debut.

One idea behind it is to create an upbeat and safe activity for people who’ve been getting most of their entertainment via computer or TV screens during the coronavirus pandemic. Audiences can’t gather in a theater for a stage adaptation of the story this December, but they can stroll down the streets of the Central West End. Another is to showcase artists of color, particularly Black artists, who have historically been underrepresented in the vision of Christmas presented by mass media.

From raising $160 million to shipping a lonely Monet, Brent R. Benjamin has seen a lot in 21 years as director of St. Louis Art Museum. He reflects on his tenure and looks ahead to how museums can adapt to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Upstairs Headroom” explores similar territory as “A Thousand Shades,” with deeper drinks of jazz fusion, electronic elements and ear-friendly pop poured into the style. The pair describe it as “future soul.”

D.B. Dowd has spent a lot of time collecting and studying the history of illustration, a category of artwork that art historians and art museums have sometimes overlooked.

Monument Lab rethinks the memorials and historic places of St. Louis

St. Louis trio CaveofswordS address the anxiety of contemporary American life by looking straight at it.

Carl Phillips was teaching Latin to high school students when a poet changed his life. Phillips had long been an avid reader and wrote poems casually, but he never conceived of poetry as a career path. The poet Martin Espada visited the school where he worked and led a workshop for faculty. He saw what Phillips wrote in an exercise and suggested he apply for a state grant. He got the grant. Then he won a poetry contest that led to publication of his first collection, “In The Blood,” in 1992. The next year he secured a position on the faculty at Washington University, where he remains a professor of English and leads a workshop in the graduate creative writing program. Many awards and honors later, Phillips published his 15th poetry collection in March this year.

Artist Mee Jey started a collaboration with husband Jey Sushil at the beginning of January. She pledged to create a portrait of Sushil every day for a year. Each day, she shows him the finished piece without comment, and he writes a short note in response. But befitting Jey’s multidisciplinary, eclectic approach, these are not simple depictions of her husband’s physical presence. They are her impressions of his mental state, rendered impressionistically — sometimes from objects Jey finds around the house. As January turned into February and February turned into March, the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic gradually grew over this evolving body of work.

Jane Birdsall-Lander talks about her "Dictionary Poem Project."