Art Con Is Expanding Its Arts Programming to the Rest of the Year

Over the past 10 years, Art Conspiracy has made a name for itself by bringing Dallas some of its most interesting and progressive arts programming. The community of artists focuses on raising money to benefit local art programs, along with uniting artists and musicians and raising awareness about exciting local…

The Best Classical Concerts in Dallas This April

For many Dallas listeners, April’s been a month long anticipated: the month that brings Mozart’s Requiem. You could almost be forgiven for blowing off the rest of the month, were it not for a series of unexpectedly brilliant programs peppering the calendar in Requiem’s wake. Courtesy some of the smaller,…

17 Awesome Things to Do in Dallas This Weekend, April 2 – 5

The Pin Show This year’s iteration of The Pin Show has us on pins and needles for all the right reasons. The much-buzzed-about local fashion event is a must-see for trendsetters and followers alike, seamlessly mixing well-heeled debutantes with edgy artistic types for a show that would be right at…

Vin Diesel and Co. Are Faster, Furiouser

You may, like me, have seen all of the Fast and Furious movies, and you may, like me, have enjoyed most or many of them. You may also, like me, have a hard time remembering exactly what happened in each film. You needn’t worry. The franchise’s Wikipedia page is filled…

Effie Gray Vaguely Damns Ruskin as a Prude

In 1848 Euphemia Gray, a bright and pretty young girl from a family of modest means, left her home in Scotland to marry her era’s equivalent of an art-world rock star, the imposingly erudite critic John Ruskin. Perhaps as early as her wedding night, Effie knew she’d made a mistake:…

Tragedy Plus Creativity = Art

In modern American history, few tragedies have tied together human suffering with societal ills in the way that Hurricane Katrina did. It was an epic, heartbreaking shitshow of everything that was, and still is, wrong with our government, our infrastructure and our culture. The shockwaves continue to reverberate a decade…

Scary Cute Creatures

There are three simple rules for keeping a gremlin: Don’t expose it to sunlight, never let it touch water, and never, under any circumstances, feed it after midnight. In Joe Dante’s Gremlins, Gizmo, the main gremlin, proves to be a difficult responsibility when it keeps spawning little equally terrifying destructive…

Caroline Mousseau

A recent New Yorker review of a contemporary painting show at the MoMA posed the question, “Is There Anything Left to Paint?” In some ways rhetorical, in others sobering. A painter working today wrestles with a medium centuries old, struggling to say something new. Something that Cydonia Gallery’s next exhibiting…

Extra-Sensory Art

Circuit 12 Contemporary isn’t throwing stones or killing birds, but they are introducing you to a bunch of new artists in just a few exhibits. Human Occult Powers explores the mystical thing we call human existence and the magical process of creation. It’s an eight-person exhibition featuring paintings, sculpture, sound…

Don’t Fear the Drone

“Drone” is a new, hot-button word in the vein of “selfie,” “poke” and “truthiness.” Thanks to their military use, drones have a negative connotation, but hobbyists are starting to reclaim the term and use it to evoke fun and skill rather than a talking point for TV pundits. It requires…

The Point of Fashion

This year’s iteration of The Pin Show has us on pins and needles for all the right reasons. The much-buzzed-about local fashion event is a must-see for trendsetters and followers alike, seamlessly mixing well-heeled debutantes with edgy artistic types for a show that would be right at home in NYC’s…

Chicago Blows Into Town

“Chic-ag-o with murder and dance and tip tappity tap JAZZ HANDS.” If I’m not mistaken, those are the opening lyrics to the musical Chicago, made famous by the movie that bears the same name. I kid. Chicago was a massive hit long before Queen Latifah ever set foot on the…

Art Takes the Streets

The best part of school was always recess. The playground. The swings and the monkey bars and the time to play with other rascals. But with adulthood comes taxes and boring dinner parties and no more recess. And it sucks. But luckily for you, there’s an adult version of recess…

On the Road to Dallas

Road comics have the best stories. When they start out, they have to play pretty much anywhere with a microphone and a stage that’s willing to barter jokes for actual money, food or a night of sleep in the barn. Austin’s Matt Sadler has a ton of those stories. He…

Ain’t No Fault in these Stars

The Little Prince isn’t just the story of that baby Michael Jackson had with his nurse. It’s a real live story. Like a book an’ shit. It also happens to be Jeff Swearingen’s favorite story ever. Seriously. We have a picture of his high school notebook and it’s covered in…

The Better to Paint You With, My Dear

Think of Who’s Afraid of Chuck and George as a roast on canvas, where — rather than having insults hurled at them — two artists will be lovingly caricatured by friends and fellow artists. In fact, nearly a hundred contributions will line the walls of CentralTrak, the UT Dallas Artists…

It’s His Sled, Dummy

Possibly, some adult somewhere in America doesn’t know the mystery of Citizen Kane – why newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane whispers the word “rosebud” on his deathbed. Who hasn’t seen the groundbreaking 1941 masterpiece by Orson Welles, a thinly biography of William Randolph Hearst that’s widely hailed the greatest movie…

Heard it through the Clothesline

These days, we can send random thoughts, meaningless musings and politically charged invective to countless people with just a couple of clicks on our phones. But there was a time when the tales, thoughts and wishes that made their way from generation to generation had to have some serious meat…

Whistle a Happy Tune

The world of Rodgers and Hammerstein is not a complicated one: it’s a place where Nazi aggression can be defeated by song; where love conquers all, even in death; and where manslaughter trials can be folded into wedding receptions, no prob. It’s all so laughably improbable that you have to…

How Hot Is Your Mikado?

The story behind Hot Mikado is, appropriately, an outlandish one — it’s a piece of musical theatre based on a jazz adaption of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, which was itself one of the more over-the-top theatrical collaborations between the famed librettist and composer. The opera, The Mikado, was a…

Don’t Wait for the Movie

Film adaptations of books have long been the saving grace of lazy students tasked with book reports — the old watch-the-movie-instead trick has exposed many a high schooler, and even George Constanza, as a non-reading fraud. Big D Reads, a partnership between D Magazine and Half-Price Books, has been aiming…

Movies with Music

There’s a push these days in the arts to be multi-genre, or to be experimental in venue, at the very least. Which is to say that concert venues host art exhibitions, and sometimes movie theaters host classical music events. Sometimes this doesn’t make sense; sometimes it’s incredibly apropos. Like with…