Celebrated flutist Sir James Galway, 70, has cancelled his March 18-21 appearances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for unspecified medical reasons. Galway has played as recently as November in Madison, Wisconsin. In a leap across gender, musical instruments and probably four or five generations, the DSO has replaced him with Grammy-nominated, 17-year-old violinist Caroline Goulding. The press release is below the fold.

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Slate has published its list of America’s top 60 givers, and the expected individuals appear (Bill Gates, $350 million; George Soros, $150 million) generally donating money to advance medicine, education, science and technology research and social causes. But there are also plenty of names we admit we’ve never heard of. When it comes to the arts, the leading donors by far are Eli and Edythe Broad, the billionaire couple behind the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the newly established Broad Art Foundation.

As for Texans, the top name (#9) is former governor Bill Clements for his $100 million donation to UT Southwestern Medical Foundation. Also included are W. A. (Tex) Moncrief, Jr. (#48) for his $18 million to UT for computational engineering and Steve and Carol Aaron for the $15 million they gave the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation.

Last August, we interviewed painter-illustrator Esther Pearl Watson on Think TV about her hilarious graphic novel, Unlovable, and her affection for oddball UFOs (Flying Saucers, Teen Angst and Esther Pearl Watson). Esther’s work was being shown at the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie. So the next month, we did a radio feature on Julie and Bruce Webb, who specialize in funky folk art and flea-market visionaries.

Well, this weekend, Esther brings her artwork back to the Webbs with a new exhibition, Space is the Place: Paintings of UFOs and Such.

ART + MUSIC: Way back in July, we told you about a unique collaboration between the Dallas Museum of Art and UTD, in which UTD students created sound designs that represent works in the DMA collection. Tonight, the DMA will take another crack at audio interpretation with a concert called “Vocal Colors.” The idea is that a vocal quartet backed by a pianist will perform as artwork related to their music is projected in the Horchow Auditorium. Dallasnews.com has further details on how the project came together.

ANDY COMES TO TOWN: “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” takes over the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth beginning Sunday. To get you up to speed on one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century, the museum’s blog has been busy cooking up a few educational posts. Last week, it featured a Q&A with Modern curator Andrea Karnes, who is facilitating the exhibit for the museum. A few days later, this post gets into some of the basic Warhol touchstones.

FOUNTAIN OF WISDOM: Our favorite local author, Ben Fountain, is answering questions today over at the Reading Room blog. Suggestion: Ask him about Haiti, he’s visited it umpteen times over the years and it appears in a couple of his terrific short stories in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

MUSIC BITS: Erykah Badu and Matthew and the Arrogant Sea have new albums coming out (not together – though that might be an interesting listen). DC9 at Night as details on where you can hear cuts from each. (DC9 at Night) … Scat Jazz Lounge in Fort Worth is planning a Haiti benefit concert featuring Tyler Wood, Adonis Rose and the Krewe of Swing, Luke Wade and No Civilians, Rabbit’s Got the Gun and Josh Weathers and the True Endeavors. DFW.com has all the details. (dfw.com)

The first U.S. retrospective of the major Belgian artist Luc Tuymans that is coming to the Dallas Museum of Art in June just opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The New York Times has a profile of Tuymans talking about his shock as a child learning that two of his uncles had been Hitler Youth. Not for nothing has Tuymans become “known for examining the visual residue of trauma and the collective desire to forget. Some of his best-known paintings deal with the Holocaust, the post-9/11 social and political climate in the United States and the legacy of the Belgian colonization of Congo — and with the ways such things linger, or don’t, in the collective consciousness.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reviews the show here. Above, The Secretary of State, 2005, oil on canvas.

The retrospective of drawings by British sculptor-and-Turner-Prize-winner Rachel Whiteread that’s coming to the Nasher later this year is now at the Hammer Museum in LA. She’s the artist famous for her giant plaster casts of the insides of rooms and entire houses. Her drawings are less well-known, but given the hefty nature of her sculptural work, this is a chance to see some of what she does. The LATimes ran a full profile of her Sunday and a review here.

Untitled, 2005, postcard with punched holes

Magazine’s latest blog, FrontRow, launched today and it’s devoted to arts criticism.  Peter Simek, late of the blog Renegade Bus, leads a team of critics including Noah Simblist and former Star-Telegramer Wayne Lee Gay, weighing in on “what we make and what it means for Dallas.”

It’s great to see a new set of arts voices in the Web world (or new-ish — just like Art&Seek, FrontRow is partly peopled by ink-stained refugees from print media). When Art&Seek launched almost two years ago, public conversation about the arts was most often held in the newspaper, and the newspaper could no longer support the critics leading those conversations (hence, the refugees).  And in truth, those discussions were pretty one-sided, back in the day when enabling comments wasn’t an option.

What’s to become of arts criticism as it – and arts news and information, something a bit different – continues to evolve? Art&Seek is working out a new model for public radio, television and the web.  FrontRow may prove to be an excellent multi-genre complement to Theater Jones‘ (mostly) single-topic focus on the Web.  D and A+C are doing the same in print.  And this doesn’t begin to address the critiques and news disseminated by individual bloggers and collective groups of artists or arts organizations.  I suspect that all this effort – as well as all the shiny-new-venue activity in town the last year or so – is at least part of what is leading The Dallas Morning News to experiment with its approach and consider new partnerships.

It’s truly exciting to imagine what might unfold as more of us join the conversation – and more media exist to present our voices.  Can’t wait.

Guest blogger Gail Sachson owns Ask Me About Art, offering lectures, tours and program planning. She is Vice-Chair of the Cultural Affairs Commission and a member of the Public Art Committee.

This past week, I was easily convinced that Dallas actually is the new New York of the art world – or the next Florence, as Ray Nasher predicted it would be.

World-renown British artist Michael Craig-Martin came to talk and show art, the second annual Dallas Art Fair drew connoisseurs and collectors from all over the world (well, from all over the state), three new galleries opened (as did a major alternative space for contemporary art) and the Arts District was alive with music, dance, opera and an original theater production at the Dallas Theater Center that just might make it to Broadway.

So how do you get to Broadway? Or Carnegie Hall? Or to your one person show at MOMA? Michael Craig-Martin, 69, known for his teaching résumé as well as his art (now showing at the Goss-Michael Foundation), spoke with the Visual Arts students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts on Saturday. He offered career advice and age-proven wisdom tempered with wit. All artists – and everyone else, for that matter – should keep these Craig-Martin musings by their bedside.

• Take advantage of all opportunities.
• Say “yes” to all odd projects and see what happens. (Craig-Martin has designed jewelry, a postage stamp, a menu and a grocery bag and decorated a car, the interior of a hospital and the exterior of an apartment building.)
• Do things as they unfold.
• Unexpected results are often more interesting than what you expected.
• It is good to nurture unfulfilled dreams.
• Make a drawing of your dreams. That will be a “kind of commitment to the realization.”
• No experience is ever wasted.
• Even mistakes will be useful. You will always learn something.

As movie theaters are looking for ways to generate additional revenue, you’ll likely be seeing more and more concerts, sporting events, etc. shown on the big screen. One such event is on the docket for Wednesday night.

Celine: Through the Eyes of the World, a concert film of Celine Dion’s 2008-2009 “Taking Chances” world tour, will play Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the AMC NorthPark. According to press materials on the film, you can:

“Join Celine as she travels to five continents and 25 countries, putting on show-stopping performances of some of her biggest hits. However, this world tour is different as Celine is traveling with her husband, her 8-year-old son, her mother, and her extended family. Intercutting concert performances with behind the scenes footage, audiences will get the chance to really know Celine, her family, and her co-performers as well as those fans that she meets and performs for around the world.”

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, e-mail TheHotTicketDallas@gmail.com for a chance to receive a pass for two to the screening. The passes don’t guarantee admission – you still have to lineup like other promo screenings to make the cut. But if you’re a big Celine fan, this might be worth your effort.

Guest blogger Bart Weiss is the Artistic Director of VideoFest.

The superbowl is what old TV is all about. It’s one of the few times in this media-fractured world that we all gather and watch the same program like the old days, when a TV show was what it was all about. There just aren’t may of those events left anymore, which is why networks are struggling and being sold.

As a game, the event has almost been a let down.  Lots of hype and a one-sided result. So at some point the day morphed into mostly being with friends and watching the commercials. For years, the commercials have been a big deal – expensive to buy, but worth the bucks for giving advertisers the same national stage the players get.  Probably the best know is the 1984 Apple spot that introduced the Mac computer.

In the go-go dot-com days, the creativity of those adds went over the top.  And the next day on talk radio and around water coolers, the commercials were the main topic of discussion.  There was always something special about a Super Bowl ad.

But not anymore.

All of those cooky animals, talking babies and other bits have run their course and just seem tired. There wasn’t one brilliant commercial this year,  nothing that stuck out and wowed you. Does this say something about where we are as a culture?A bout where TV ads are? About creativity allowed in ad agencies? About not having enough money to spend on creative thinking? Does a downturn curb risk taking and thus creativity? Or are the creative marketing minds thinking of how do hit iPhone/iPad/Facebook users rather than Super Bowl watchers.

Either way, it was probably the best actual Super Bowl game I have ever seen.