The new director is married, by the way, to the beautiful, Houston-reared actress/entrepreneur Jacqueline Buckingham Anderson, who’s likely to give Anna-Sophia a run for her money as a head-turner on the social circuit. Just now Jacqueline — who literally does hail from central casting — is said to be overseeing the building of a new home for the Andersons in Preston Hollow. (She’s had practice at such things, having “redecorated” the couple’s 12,000-square-foot, museum-provided residence in Indy with buying trips to California and Europe, according to the NYT). According to John Eagle, president of the DMA board, she may eventually start her own business here putting art into public or corporate spaces like hospitals.

The Cowboys are not great, right? I don’t exactly follow sports, but I know that they missed the playoffs and generally make it a seasonal habit to stomp all over the already-ravaged hearts of their loyal fans with size enormous cleats. So, safe to say they could maybe use a little bit of a morale booster, and maybe a tiny bit of positive PR. Meanwhile, with all the financial struggles arts organizations have faced lately, opera choruses have lacked traditionally huge numbers. And also, there’s this whole struggle to get people to even go to the opera, because it’s, well, the opera and some humans find it boring.

I propose that team members of the Dallas Cowboys plug the gap, in uniform (caveat: actual singing talent, again, trumped by amusement). Helmets, pads, everything. I’d prefer that this collaboration happen during a performance on the football field, but the whole thing might be even funnier on stage at the Winspear. This way, you really get your different audiences coming together. And it absolutely should not be boring.

By that headline, you might think that Dallas expat actor Owen Wilson were himself nominated for an Academy Award. Though I think his performance might have been worthy, he’s not. Midnight in Paris really only has that single, tenuous local connection.

So it’s a stretch. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that there’s another film on the list of Best Picture nominees that actually had segments filmed in downtown Dallas: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. The Chapel of Thanksgiving and Reunion Tower can both be prominently seen in the movie.

Plus Art and Seek notes a local nominee in the Best Animated Short category.

But yes, I know, Owen Wilson has got more star power.

The Booker T. orchestra has a chance to perform at Carnegie Hall in May, but the trip will cost about $70,000. The group already has more than $50,000 in the bank, and a good portion of that money came from the H.U.T. Fund. As a proud alum, I’d like to publicly thank Bergren for his generosity.

You can read more about the Booker T. orchestra in the current issues of Preston Hollow People and Oak Cliff People. And you can hear them perform — for free — at 7:30 tomorrow night at SMU’s Caruth Auditorium.

By Michelle Rawlings

We told you a couple days ago about the upcoming art exhibition of work by Michelle Rawlings (the daughter of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings), which starts Jan. 21 at the Oliver Francis Gallery. In perusing the young artist’s website for material about which I might make snarky remarks, one item initially escaped my attention.

It was on my second time through that I looked more carefully at the image you see at right, labeled simply as “uncle — installation.” The strikingly mustachioed man is the focus of the work, so one can easily be forgiven in not noticing the shirtless fellow to the right on the novelty Playgirl cover. Damned if that didn’t look like Mayor Rawlings himself. And it is.

Michelle confirmed as much, via email. And the story she shared about this wonderfully goofy mock magazine cover was surprisingly heartfelt:

That photo was from a time my Dad and Uncle and I were at the West End. I was about 12 and we all put on costumes and took pictures in one of those fake magazine photo booths. I remember that afternoon really well, my Uncle died suddenly only a couple years after that.

The work was intended to deal with the memory of my Uncle who I’ve always wished I had known better. It was also intended to show how on the surface, a picture seems like one thing, but there is a story underneath that complicates our assumptions, and what we think we know about what we see. The image becomes something entirely different when we learn something new, and the meaning of it shifts.

It is on my website because I felt it was an essential part of a larger group of portraits I completed last year. That work was about showing how there are images we encounter in daily life which become questionable when taken out of context. When we see something that makes us uncomfortable, it reminds that we are each ultimately alone to navigate our sense of morality, and our feelings towards others.

If my work seems like I am making a joke, it is only because I think jokes are sometimes the most serious things people say.

I asked the Mayor’s office for confirmation as well, and his chief of staff has promised she has some material about the artwork. As soon as she sends it my way, I’ll share that.

"I Love You All" by Michelle Rawlings

FrontRow notes that artist Michelle Rawlings, the daughter of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, will have an exhibition of her work at the Oliver Francis Gallery starting Jan. 21.

Even if you don’t give a whit about art, please click here and scroll down to behold “Pin the Macho on the Man,” a (NSFW) piece of which her papa must be especially proud.

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to make it compute that the printing of a photo on an inkjet is considered art.

UPDATE: Stop the presses! Is that Mayor Mike himself on the fake Playgirl cover with the uncle?

UPDATE UPDATE: Yes, it is.

Friday

I’ll start by noting that if you still want to go to the game out in Arlington that’s not really the Cotton Bowl, there are tickets available online. And if you’re a fan of Anderson Cooper’s favorite “comedian,” she’s in town too.

Those who prefer a higher brow evening should hit the First Friday at the Modern in Fort Worth. I know, I know, it’s such a long drive to get to Cowtown, but where else are you going to be able to enjoy cocktails, dinner, jazz by the group Outer Circles, a docent-led tour of the museum galleries, plus a movie about the Shakespeare of Germany, Young Goethe in Love?  Yep, nowhere else.

Saturday

Your last chance to see the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform Philip Glass’ American Four Seasons and pieces by Mikhail Glinka and Tchaikovsky is on Saturday night. The DSO needs, and deserves, your support.

If you’re not musically inclined, WaterTower Theatre is opening its production of The Diary of Anne Frank this weekend. That’s a story I hope never to see as a musical.

Sunday

There are great options for entertaining the small people who may live in your home as well. I’d drag my kids (if I had any) to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History to see the exhibit on George Washington. Last year I read Joseph Ellis’ biography of our first president, His Excellency, George Washington, and finished the book with a much greater esteem for the man than I’d ever had before. He ranks as one of our more underrated presidents, not like that weasel Jefferson.

But if you give your children the option of visiting animatronic dinosaurs at the Heard Museum in McKinney instead, then I wouldn’t expect them to be begging you at the end of the day for a visit to Mount Vernon.

Other things to do in Dallas this weekend here.

Here’s something else I’ll share with you: I’ve recently learned that the best time to visit the Nasher’s garden is before, oh, 3:30 p.m., because something frightening happens every day at that time. Anyone who has driven Central Expressway during certain hours of the day knows how the gold Pegasus building (which will always be the Fina building to me) can focus the sun’s rays directly into your eyes. On Central, the danger is that you will drive off the road and die in a fiery crash. The same phenomenon now occurs at the Nasher — except the sun’s rays bounce off the new Museum Tower (pictured), and the danger is that you will mistake Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Bronze Crowd for an approaching zombie mob and embarrass yourself when you turn to flee and run headlong into the trunk of an oak (or a better joke).

Anyway, you’ve been warned and notified.

Tonight offers the chance to shine a harsh academic light upon this object of your titillated curiosity, by attending a DMA lecture discussing works in the museum collection that depict the intersection of sex and the Hindu religion. “The Hindu Art of Love: Illustrating the Kama Sutra” will be presented by Dr. Anne Bromberg, the DMA’s curator of ancient and Asian art.

There are other happenings at the museum as well, so you’ll have excuses to give your prudish, judgmental friends for where you’re going tonight. There’s jazz in the DMA atrium starting at 6 p.m., and an “artistic encounter” about creativity (where you’ll get the chance to learn about how to put creative thinking tools into practice) that starts at 6:30 p.m.  The sex talk doesn’t get going until 7:30 p.m.

Too racy for you? Find other things to do in Dallas tonight right here.