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Great Interview With Former DMN Photographer Damon Winter

You may remember New York Times photographer Damon Winter’s work from his shots of President Obama during the campaign. (They did win Winter a Pulitzer after all.) I didn’t know until I read his interview with the blog Too Much Chocolate that he actually got his start at the Dallas Morning News. Worth a read — unless you’ve already checked it out, which is possible, since I’ve seen this link retweeted about 50 times today.

Arts of Collin County Bids First Phase

If you’d like to construct a 2,100-seat theater near the intersection of Custer Road and the Sam Rayburn Tollway in Allen, the Arts of Collin County Commission opened bidding on the project today.

It’s just the first phase of a grand performing arts center that Plano, Frisco, and Allen have united to build. Mike Simpson, the former mayor of Frisco and current executive director of the Arts of Collin County, met with  a small group of Collin County leaders and potential arts patrons last night at Gleneagles Country Club in Plano. I was also invited.

The update that Simpson gave was very much what I explained in August. Simpson told me that the ACC commission has a fiscal responsibility to bid out construction  now, while costs are as low as their likely to get. ACC leaders hope the first phase will come in under $80 million.

In their best case scenario then, they’ll bid the project and find they’re $7 million or $8 million away from being able to pay for it. They’ll have a few months once the bids are finalized to secure all the necessary funding before they can award a bid. (They’ve raised less than $10 million in four years of concentrated effort to this point). (more…)

Crow Collection Gets Its Patio On

Curious about the construction I’ve seen outside the Crow Collection of Asian art, on the corner of Flora and Harwood, I asked the museum’s director, Amy Hofland, what’s going on. Says Hofland:

It’s called Snuff Bottle Court (because of the snuff bottle installation) and will have a wisteria arbor (SHADE!); tables, chairs, wifi; an installation of Hokusai’s Great Wave in plant material on the back wall; lighting and very cool ambiance. We’re inviting Teiichi (Tei An) to come down for events (Late Nights with the DMA, Members’ Previews, etc. and on occasional lunch hours) to serve Japanese hand food and tea. Launches at the Late Night (we call it Zen in the City) on November 20.

Hofland says the space is for programmed events, but they are testing the market to see if maybe the space could work as a regular lunch spot. I say huzzah to that. I walk Flora Street every day to and from work. Now that the Arts District is (mostly) built, it’s time for the next step: street-level spaces that cater to daily life. And while I’m at it, I’m tired of looking at the back of the Belo Mansion, too. (P.S. The Crow has inspired me. My new bar is called Snuff Film Alley.)

Philip Glass and Dracula at the Winspear

“It’s not actually repetitive. That’s an illusion,” composer Philip Glass said in response to a question about whether playing his music on a keyboard causes his hands to suffer from repetitive stress syndrome.

Glass’ music generally leaves me cold. In fact, I find if I listen to it too intently the repetition can get maddening. But to have it played live in accompaniment to the 1931 film Dracula, as it was last night at the Winspear Opera House, was tremendous fun. Together the music and the movie (which only a generous critic would call “good”) were more than the sum of their parts. Glass explained during a post-performance Q&A that it was the film’s star, Bela Lugosi–or more precisely the tragic arc of Lugosi’s life–that drew him to want to write a new score for it.

It was my first time inside the performance hall at the Winspear, and it lived up to the hype. My wife only had one small complaint. The air vents beneath our seats were pumping cold air out with such enthusiasm that her legs felt like icicles by the end of the show. She was looking to let the management know afterward, and I had to argue with her to convince her not to force some poor usher to touch her cold ankles.

Willard Spiegelman on Verdi’s Otello at the Winspear

The Dallas Opera opened its season last night, with a performance of Verdi’s Otello at the new Winspear Opera House. Willard Spiegelman was there, and sends along this report:

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The PAC on TV Tonight

If you’re not lucky enough to go to Otello tonight at the Winspear, you might want to tune in to Channel 8 at 6:30. The station is airing a half-hour special on the PAC. To wit:

WFAA takes viewers on a guided tour of all parts of this impressive complex in a half-hour special hosted by the station’s performing arts reporter, Gary Cogill. It’s a rare backstage and behind-the-scenes tour of the inner workings of the Winspear Opera House, Wyly Theater [sic] and the arts complex that critics all over the world are raving about.

Time Takes Pretty Pics of the PAC

An alert FBvian points us to this photo gallery of the AT&T Performing Arts Center on Time’s site. (Side note: I’m a pretty fast typer. But it kills me to type “AT&T Performing Arts Center.” See? Right there. I just died. My ghost is now typing this post. So from now on, this thing will be called the PAC on this blog. It has been decreed.)

Giant Pac-Man to Eat Downtown Dallas on Sunday

This Sunday, a flash mob art happening will produce the image you see here. That’s the plan, anyway. It’s a caper planned by the Professional Artist Coalition to show support for healthcare reform. Jump for more details.

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Brad Oldham Scores Commission

The headline works better when you know that this commission for Brad Oldham involves bronzing sheets of music. A score. Get it? Okay, right. If you have to explain the joke, then –

Here’s the deal: Brad Oldham, one half of the duo that brought us Traveling Man, is now working on a piece for longtime DSO donor and subscriber Faye Briggs. Briggs was at the DSO today to go through its library and chose a score that will act as the DNA of a 7-foot sculpture, an artist’s rendering of which you see here.

(Full disclosure: the only reason I’m posting this is so that the next time I play basketball with Brad, he’ll go easy on me. Oh, and I figure the more famous he gets, the more my wife’s engagement ring will be worth.)

Tibetan Monks Play in the Sand at Crow Collection

Because the Arts District is our new neighborhood, I strolled on over to the Crow Collection of Asian Art to take in a little lunchtime culture. The museum has a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery constructing a mandala throughout this week. Those are millions of grains of sand that the monks are using to construct “the green Tara,” which, one of the monks explained to the 40 or so people gathered for a free noontime talk, is a “deity for accomplishment.”

Through meditation the monks cultivate an energy that they manifest into physical form through the sand, and “that energy has the potential to uproot all sufferings.” He left us with the impression that just viewing the mandala can make a person feel better.

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Robert Murdock, Former Dallas Museum of Art Curator, R.I.P.

Not sure why this is just getting reported now, but Robert Murdock, curator of contemporary and 20th-century art at the Dallas Museum of Art in the 1970s, died October 1 in New York, of complications from cancer. With all the justified hullabaloo surrounding this week’s opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, it’s worth taking a moment to remember one of the people who helped solidify the Arts District’s place here.

Tibetan Monks at the Crow Collection This Week

On Sunday, seven Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta began a mandala to celebrate new beginnings, in this case the opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center this week. My one IPhone photo does no justice  to the ceremony (the nice pictures sent by the Crow Collection people were too big for the blog, or so WordPress tells me).

The intricate work on the mandala will continue all week on the second flow of the Crow Collection.  On Friday, there will be a prayer flag presentation ceremony at 6 pm, with viewing until midnight. On Saturday, the monks will conduct a shamala meditation sitting from 1 to 2 pm. On Sunday, the monks will conduct a closing ceremony in which the mandala is dismantled, reminding us of the impermanence of all things.

Christina Rees Wants More Art Criticism

The former owner of RoadAgent and current curator of  Fort Worth Contemporary Arts (and former D Magazine associate editor) presses the case that local media, including yours truly, should do more to cover the arts less promotionally and more critically.  Peter Simek at RenegadeBus seconds that motion and ups the ante (”D Magazine reeks of it,” says he, referring to a “quippy little piece that passed as arts criticism in FDLuxe“).

I am, of course, grateful for any advice I can get on how to run a media operation. As it happens, I agree with Christina. (As for Peter, I have no idea what he is talking about, except for affecting a general snobbishness toward the Great Unwashed — which I suppose includes the writers, editors, and readers of D Magazine — which role I thought Jeremy Weeks already performs admirably.) 

The problem they don’t address, and I am trying to address as I think this problem through, is how to pay critics to do the work we would all like to see them do. Advertisers aren’t interested in it; hence, the demise of art criticism in newpapers. Foundations are besieged by arts organizations for direct support; arts criticism doesn’t even make the list. So the quandry, which I am working on, is how to make Christina’s vision a reality. Meanwhile, I hope she keeps pressing the issue. Nothing good happens without a nag.

A Red Balloon Over the Nasher

In the current episode of the “print product,” there appear two stories about an experiment we ran to determine whether the forthcoming Museum Tower might possibly interfere with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s wonderful installation Tending, (Blue). You can read Willard Spiegelman’s sober, insightful account of our caper here. Me, I just write jokes. Anyway, I’d forgotten till now that I’d taken this picture. In the final scene of my story, when the DSO’s PR director, Stacie Adams, catches me standing in their backyard, here’s what I was doing:

Here’s Hoping Your Woman Doesn’t Work for the Performing Arts Center

What? I haven’t yet mentioned that My Fair Lady works for the AT&T Performing Arts Center? On a contract basis? Well, yes, it’s true. She does. And last night I saw something related to said gig in our closet that made me shudder. She’d been talking for weeks about having to attend all the opening-week festivities and how this attendance would require many new dresses and perhaps even handbags and so forth. My advice to her: spend your money on one kickass dress, and then wear that sucker every night. Own the look. You know?

She wasn’t having any of it. And, thus, apparently, she went out and had it. Because our closet is now populated by no fewer than — what? — five new dresses. It’s hard to say. They are hanging. I did not wish to disturb them. Perhaps their price tags would become visible, and I would vomit. I store my shoes in our closet, and I didn’t want to vomit in my shoes.

Point is, if your lady is similarly engaged, I want to say that I feel for you, brother. It’s like that at my house, too. Only one way to handle it: either it’s time to buy a retaliatory tux (name of my new band), or you lose some weight to where you can fit into one of those dresses. Good luck.

Leading Off (09/25/09)

1. I was feeling a bit like Yossarian (”They’re trying to kill me.”) when I saw the news about attempted bombings both here in Dallas and in the city of my birth. I’m grateful that the FBI actively seeks to head off would-be terrorists. But what struck me most in reading about both incidents is that these guys are probably like a lot of self-proclaimed jihadists: they’re just a couple of dumb kids.

2. Maybe I should have made the first item the third. It’s hard to segue into talking about the State Fair of Texas opening today. Except — well, what better way to celebrate the continuing triumph of American freedom over the forces of darkness than by shoveling corny dogs and fried butter down our gullets?

3. For those who plan to avoid the Fair’s opening weekend, Fort Worth is offering some counterprogramming Saturday with its Day in the District. Seven attractions are free. Including the Kimbell Art Museum, which will be unveiling its newest acquisition, “The Torment of Saint Anthony.” That doesn’t get you excited? What if I told you it’s a painting by Michelangelo, the only one to hang in the Western Hemisphere? A little more interested? Oh, who am I kidding? See you at the Fair.

Performing Arts Center Needs (Only) 1,300 Volunteers

Here’s the deal: the AT&T Performing Arts Center needs bodies — lots of them. For the opening week, they need 300 people. For the inaugural season of performances, they need 1,000 more. What’s in it for you? A free shirt. Oh, and you get to see the performance for which you volunteer, which means you might get to make out with Bruce Willis. Jump for the details.

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THE Magazine Hits the Skids

Speaking of Jerome Weeks, a finger-gun-shooting FBvian points us to this post in which Weeks wonders whether THE Magazine is long for this world. Seems the mag that covers galleries and the like hasn’t paid its freelancers in some time, which is never a good sign.

Jerome Weeks Reads Our October Issue So You Don’t Have To

Tip o’ the hat to Jerome Weeks for his (largely complimentary) breakdown of our October issue over on KERA’s Art&Seek blog.

Mini-Review: “The Black Monk” at Undermain

I missed its debut in the spring but by reprising David Rabe’s adaptation of Chekhov’s short story, the Undermain has thoughtfully allowed me to catch up. I was thrilled to be able to see it. Every actor was perfectly cast; Bruce DuBose set the tone with a performance that was at once bombastic, subtle, and comic. Jerome Weeks’s review of the original production is here, and Ed Townley’s is here. The play runs Wed-Sat for the next three weeks. Go here for tickets.

Arts Center Holds Some Surprises

At least, according to the LA Times, which did a travel report about the center and its opening in October. Most of the information I already know. However, this sentence provided some insight I had yet to hear.

The new venues will be woven together by a 10-acre pubic park.

So many jokes. So little time.

Dallas Wind Symphony’s “Carmina Burana” Tonight

Here’s my mini-review: Go. The performance is brilliant, fun, and emotional.  The Wind Symphony’s Jerry Junkin manages to conduct not only a rousing orchestra but four different choruses with bravado and charm. If I were a music critic I might mention that soprano Angela Turner-Wilson was ethereal and that baritone David Small handled a very difficult role with finesse, while tenor Jeffrey Jones-Ragona might want to stay home and nurse his throat next time, but I’m not a music critic.  

The performance begins at 8. Now I’m going to tell you my dirty little secret. Symphonies put the draw after the intermission.  If they put it before the intermission, half the audience would leave. Instead, that’s when I arrive, at intermission, which in this case is about 8:45. Do not, under any conditions,  follow my poor example.

Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Gets Cozy With AT&T

Just when we were all getting accustomed to that acronym rolling off our tongues, the Dee Cee Pee Yay has gone and picked up a corporate sponsor that requires a name change. The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is no longer the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. It’s the AT&T Performing Arts Center. The Ay Tee Tee Pee Yay Cee? I’m guessing folks will just call it “The Pack” (for PAC). Anyway, the full release is after the jump. It doesn’t tell you the one thing we all want to know: how much was the deal worth?

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My New Favorite Calligrapher: Ken Brown

Loyal readers of the “print product” will recall a little ditty I wrote about the Duckbill money clip back in March. I still love that thing. Highly recommended. Well, the guy who engraves the Duckbills (if you so choose) is a man named Ken Brown. He does calligraphic engraving with a dental drill, a process he taught himself. Well, you know who’s a loyal reader of the “print product”? Ken Brown is. After reading this story about how Spider Monkey and I nearly drowned in the Trinity (slight exaggeration), Ken sent over an engraved bottle of wine (pictured). Here’s the poem writ thereon:

A toast to the Trinity/ And surrounding muck./ A toast to the Matrix/ That didn’t get stuck./ A toast to the Monkey,/ While shooting the news,/ With brute force she pushed/ And Tim saved his shoes!

Now all I have to do is drink this thing before Spider Monkey reads this post and demands her share.

Forbes Ranks Dallas as a Cultural Tourism Capital of the Country

Yes, yes. This is fun to crow about. Forbes lists the top 10 “cultural tourism capitals” of the country. Dallas comes in at No. 7 (behind No. 6 Atlanta, ahead of No. 8 Houston, and crushing No. 10 San Francisco). This fact will no doubt soon show up on the CVB’s website, as it should. But just hang on a second. Check out the methodology:

To determine America’s top cities for cultural tourism, we measured the number of 2008 overnight visitors to each of the 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, factoring in the number of cultural institutions — including museums, sports teams, and live theater and concert venues — according to New York-based AOL City Guide, an online database of local businesses, restaurants, cultural institutions and bars.

So it’s largely based on how many people visit each city. Whether they were here for the Texas-OU game or the Nasher we don’t know. And the number of cultural institution was factored in? How? In other words, there’s no qualitative measure here at all. It’s tough to build a ranking with qualitative measures, I know, but how about polling the country’s culture critics? That could have been interesting.

P.S. Yes, I realize that Forbes story went up August 20. But it’s new to me.