NEW MIDLAKE DROPS TODAY: Denton’s Midlake releases its latest album, The Courage of Others, today. And if for some reason it doesn’t sell, it won’t be for lack of press. Dallasnews.com checks in with the band’s songwriter, Tim Smith, as the band preps for a European tour. The reviews have been spotty, though. The Onion’s [...]

You may recall that the new artspace, the Dallas Contemporary, was all set to open last month to a lot of attention. But then it didn’t. Talk about anticlimactic. When we spoke with Joan Davidow on Think TV, she explained that it was the last-minute delays in getting the building ready for inspection and certification [...]

Tyler Green over at the Modern Art Notes blog, has deviously managed to insert fine arts news into the massive media obsession and extravaganza over the Super Bowl: He’s goaded the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art to wager the loan of some major paintings on the game’s outcome. The [...]

Over on the feature side, we reported this morning about the pitch that Dallas-area Abernethy Media Professionals is making today in Las Vegas at the annual conference of television programming executives. Abernethy won the opportunity in a national competition, and they were going to try to sell the media judges on “Lone Star Opera” — [...]

COLLIN COUNTY INCHES CLOSER TO GOAL: Arts of Collin County sends word that it raised more than $135,000 in December. The money will go toward the construction of the 2,100 seat performance hall and adjoining park to be built at the intersection of Sam Rayburn Tollway and Exchange Parkway. In February, the group will announce [...]

The city-wide arts-education partnership among Big Thought, Dallas Independent School District, the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the Wallace Foundation and some 100 area arts organizations will continue — and head to the next level. That was the good news announced this morning at the Charles Rice Learning Center: The Wallace Foundation is handing over [...]

Michael May of the Texas Observer visited both the AT&T PAC and the Cowboys Stadium (specifically its modern art), asking the question, “Can extravagant, cutting-edge art and architecture transform Dallas?”
Perhaps only in Dallas could the Super Bowl prospects of the home team get weighed in the answer:
Jones [Gene Jones, wife of Cowboys owner Jerry, an [...]

In the WSJ, Willard Spiegelman reviews the Kimbell Art Museum’s current exhibition, “From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern.” He calls it not so much another of the Kimbell’s “elegantly didactic” efforts — a description one might apply to the entertainingly waspish Spiegelman himself — but a celebration, “a giant Christmas [...]

New year, new rules. It’ll be general admission, $10, from 11 am to 9 pm from now on. Too bad, because those Thursday nights were pretty happening events.
Of course, there’s still the free first Tuesday of every month. But damn, my ironic karma hits hard and fast. This news came out just when I was [...]

A playwriting prize has been named for the late Texas dramatist, the NYTimes reports. Mercifully, it’s not going to be entirely New York-centric. The Horton Foote Prize will be awarded every other year to “an American playwright who has written an original work of exceptional quality.” The choice will be based on submissions from 65 [...]