The Who’s Tommy at the Dallas Theater Center with Nehal Joshi and Heath Williams II. Photo by Brandon Thibodeaux.
Guest Blogger Gail Sachson owns Ask Me About Art, is Vice-Chair of the Cultural Affairs Commission and a member of the Public Art Committee. She is an auxiliary member of the Dallas Theater Center Board of Trustees.
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Guest blogger Brad Ford Smith is a Dallas artist and art conservator.

Some of the work available at 5×7 Art Splurge in 2006

The 5X7 Art Splurge and Exhibition is happening tonight, so grab your purse, your wallet or that jar of loose change and get ready to grab some great art at great prices for a [...]

Catfish Moon by David Bates, 1986, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art and the Barrett Collection
Nona and Richard Barrett’s latest donation to Dallas Museum of Art: 180 works by contemporary Texas artists.
Acquired in January, the collection is on display in the museum’s Tower Gallery through Sept. 14. Lone Star Legacy II: The Barrett Collection [...]

The Aug. 25 issue of New York magazine features its “Approval Matrix” on p. 184 — a rather Spy magazine-like device in which recent cultural events are mapped out on a grid according to how “highbrow” or “lowbrow” they are and how “despicable” or “brilliant.” In the “brilliant” but “lowbrow” quadrant, for instance, New York [...]

Changes are afoot at the Bayreuth Festival, the annual Bavarian event devoted exclusively to the operas of Richard Wagner. The 2008 festival concludes today, signaling the end of the long directorship of Wolfgang Wagner, the composer’s grandson. He will turn 89 on Saturday and is reported to be in poor health. His resignation takes effect [...]

It’s difficult to assess the presidential candidates’ differences on the arts, arts funding and arts education for a simple reason: Senator McCain doesn’t seem to have spelled out any stand on these issues, other than a general opposition to funding “obscenity.”
This isn’t meant as a partisan statement in support of Senator Obama. If you do [...]

It’s still nine months away, but subscriptions to the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition go on sale at 9 a.m. Friday. This edition, the 13th, will last more than two weeks, opening on May 22 and closing on June 7. The venue is, of course, Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth.
An international lineup of [...]

Still from Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation
News of this year’s lineup at the Dallas Video Festival has begun trickling out, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a shot-by-shot remake of the original Indiana Jones movie by a trio of Mississippi teenagers. Actually, the boys were 12 when they started re-creating [...]

This week’s issue of the Dallas Observer (not yet available online) features not one but two sizable arts profiles, cover boy Kevin Moriarty, the new artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, and an inside “City” column on George Steel, the new general director of the Dallas Opera. The usual talk of a watershed moment [...]

Trinity Arts Guild, one of the oldest membership organizations for visual artists in North Texas, has called for entries to its annual New & Emerging Juried Show. The 47-year-old Bedford-based nonprofit is looking for paintings and sculptures (but not photographs) from accomplished amateurs.
To qualify, you must be at least 18 and not make your living [...]