The 50th anniversary of piano legend Van Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky competition victory in Moscow isn’t until April 14th, but Fort Worth, home of the Cliburn Competition, begins celebrating tomorrow. Cliburn’s shocking win, at the age of 23, during the height of the Cold War, helped ease, at least temporarily,  American’s fears about Soviet superiority.  
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The party may be Saturday at PanAmerican ArtProjects in the trendy Dragon Street gallery area, but the space that matters is in Oak Cliff, an overgrown, 35-acre site along Jefferson Boulevard. The woody, flood-plain lot has an old house on it (right) and a large, skeletal chunk of concrete trestle running right through it (left) – from the days of the [...]

Only one portrait of J. S. Bach exists that was taken from life. Now with laser scanners, experts from the Centre for Forensic and Medical Art at Dundee University in Scotland have reconstructed his face from measurements of his skull and details from that life portrait.

It has been predicted for awhile, and now it’s happened. According to the Pew Project on the States, five states currently spend more on prisons than on higher education.
No, one of them isn’t Texas.
Those states are (in order of spending the most proportionally on prisons in 2007): Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware. The state [...]

Colossus #16, by Socrates Narvaez
Dallas’ arts magnet — the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — is set to move into its old/new campus in the Arts District later this spring. Spire Realty Group is marking the occasion by showcasing 24 student sculptures in the Scrap Can Be Beautiful exhbition in the lobby [...]

The Backsliders, the Rubber Glove, eco-films and encaustic art: Gini Mascorro gives the lowdown on cultural events in the area:

Speaking of the Arts District — well, I was, anyway — you might recall my vow to keep up with Domenic Cavendish’ series of columns for the New Statesman about “the connections between culture and regeneration.”
In his latest report, Cavendish examines Liverpool, which has been declared this year’s European “Capital of Culture.” This has seemingly triggered [...]

News stories about Dallas’ Arts District often try to cite the total price tag, which is slippery (do you include the underground parking garage? What about all the related civic improvements, like the re-working of Flora Street?). I’ve been guilty of the same thing. Tossing around a (possible) billion dollar figure is not just bragging, though. [...]

Whatever the exhibition’s aesthetic or scholarly value, it was easy enough to conclude that the Kimbell Art Museum’s current show, Picturing the Bible: Early Christian Art, was going to be popular in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Just consider the number of superchurches here.
But here’s another, somewhat surprising reason: According to Christianity Today, there’s been an [...]

The Art Critic, by Sandy Huffaker
Inspired by his viewing of Project Runway and Make Me a Supermodel — I would say “brain-deadened” by them, but I’ve barely seen any reality TV, so upholding the finest traditions of  criticism, I’ll silently pretend I know what I’m talking about – arts editor Jeff Weinstein (who blogs for Artsjournal as Out [...]