Which one will show up tonight to emcee the premiere installment of the DMA’s “State of the Arts” discussion series? Hint: his interlocutors will be Veletta Lill and Ann Williams.

Congrats, David, on your new baby. (And what you said to me earlier today in that e-mail about that panel featuring Councilwoman Angela Hunt in the Souvenir of Dallas we’re working on for January was spot on.)

Meslay spent the last 16 years at the Louvre. Maybe you’ve heard of it. France? The Mona Lisa? Oui? Meslay himself is French, though I did not see him smoke a single cigarette during the luncheon. He’s the good kind of French. Funny, kind, unpretentious. And probably the best dad in the whole world. He told me he kept his flat in Paris, where his 19-year-old daughter is now holding down the fort. When I expressed grave concern over this state of affairs, Meslay said in his accented English, “Not to worry. She has many friends. She will not be lonely.” To which I replied, “That’s what I’m worried about, Olivier! The friends! The exact opposite of loneliness! Please, give me the address immediately.” (I didn’t actually ask for the address. But I wanted to.) More proof that he’s a good dad: he has two boys at Highland Park High School. Said Meslay, who confessed during his speech later that he himself was not a good student, “I do not care that they make good grades. Now it is more important to make friends. But do not tell them I said this.”

Important aside to the Meslay boys: I am making this up, the stuff about the grades. The DMA served me a free lunch yesterday, establishing a deep, personal material connection between the museum and me. I cannot be trusted. Your father didn’t actually say to me that he didn’t care about your grades. What he actually said was the following: “If they do not make honor roll, I will rip off their arms and beat them with their own bloody limbs.” Seriously. Why are you reading this? Go study!

Let’s see. What else? Oh, Meslay pronounces our city’s name like this: dew-LASS. I like it.

I didn’t get any personal time with Jeffrey Grove, so I can’t speak to his parenting skills or whether he even has children or wants children or prefers cats. Who knows? But I can tell you that he’s a sharp dresser, and he’s bald. In his remarks, Grove said that when he first met Meslay years ago, he mistakenly thought he was the director of the Louvre. This got a laugh. So did the following line, which he issued while flipping through slides of shows he has curated throughout his career: “Every curator has to do a Dale Chihuly show at some point. I did mine early and got it out of the way.”

You can read the bios for both the guys if you want to see their (considerable) bona fides, but I’ll draw attention to one line from Grove’s résumé: he was the founding curator of the Spy Museum, in Washington, D.C., which was an effort that many laughed at when it was announced but which, thanks to its immersive environment, has proven immensely popular. Bodes well for the DMA. Oh, one other thing: Groves gave Trenton Doyle Hancock his first museum show. Loyal readers of the “print product” will recognize the name from the recent profile we did on him.

The big takeaway from the luncheon? Besides that there’s a young woman with the run of a Paris flat and no parental interference? It’s the reason these two guys came to dew-LASS. They both said the environment here is unique. The way the local collectors (e.g., Rachofsky, Rose, Hoffman) work in collaboration with each other and with the museum — that doesn’t happen everywhere. It certainly doesn’t happen at a place like the Louvre. These guys are jazzed by the energy, the scene in Dallas. Too: they both have found amazing works in the DMA’s vaults that have not been on display for decades. They’re eager to show us what we’ve been missing in new and inventive ways.

Just to give you an idea: Bonnie Pitman, the DMA’s director, said that since 2001, the museum has been given 2,500 works of art. Then there’s the stuff they’ve bought. There’s a lot to see. Pittman said they’ve been waiting for the PAC to finish its work. Now it’s the DMA’s turn, the institution that started it all in the Arts District. Look for a major fundraising campaign sometime in the near future.

Go, art!

And now, after two years running his eponymous gallery in Deep Ellum, he’s going back to doing that full time (through video, photo, and simply talking to people). But first, one last show: HOME?, featuring the works of Willie Baronet. It sort of brings this chapter of Hal’s life full circle. For 14 years, Baronet — who formerly ran the MasonBaronet design studio — has bought signs from homeless people, treating them like folk artists instead of ignoring them or tossing some spare change their way. HOME? collect them for the first time, and it’s a fitting last show: an artist interested in helping people who walked away from a successful business to do it. I’m not sure where Hal will turn up again, but I know it will be worth paying attention to.

The show opens tomorrow with a reception tomorrow night from 6-10 p.m. at Hal Samples Gallery, 2814 Main. Proceeds go to The Stewpot.

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).

Simpson hopes that showing just how close they are to their goal will help to spur further funding. They’d love to see more corporate donations, including selling naming rights (Hello, AT&T Performing Arts Center of Collin County?), but they also welcome any little donations they can get. Simpson highlighted two $1 donations he’d received from Frisco High School students that day, and a $2,000 donation he received from a 90-year-old woman who told him they better get the thing built while she’s still around to enjoy it.

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.)

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.