Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 18 2025

Cartoon King: The Brilliant Accessibility of KAWS at Crystal Bridges

It’s Mickey Mouse, but not. It’s The Simpsons, but twisted. It’s a shaggy Muppet, but there’s something off about the eyes…
Since the late 1990s, KAWS (legal name: Brian Donnelly) has been putting his own original twist on well-known pop-culture figures and inventing his own cast of iconic characters that are complex, familiar, and deeply relatable.
“Part of the brilliance of KAWS’ work is that he pulls from the world we know,” says Alejo Benedetti, curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 12 2025

Fade To Black: Week-Long Arts Festival Amplifies Black Voices in Houston

At a time when many institutions are pulling away from telling diverse stories, Houston is proudly showing its support for the Black artistic community with the Fade To Black Festival. This week-long summer celebration highlights and elevates Black voices, transforming downtown Houston into a hub of Black artistry from June 8-14.
In 2013, her organization premiered the first iteration of Fade To Black as a play festival in the 80-seat Obsidian Theater (at the time called Obsidian Art Space). The...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • March 31 2025

Dance Here: Agora Artists is Planting the Seeds to Make Dallas a Dance Town

A common lament among Dallas performing arts leaders is how the city’s talent doesn’t stay in Texas. Dancers, singers, and actors are born here, train here, and then leave for New York, Chicago, or even abroad. Someone should fix that, everyone thinks, and Avery-Jai Andrews is ready to be that someone.
“I would call Dallas a traditional dance company town,” says Andrews, who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later NYU, before performing in Isr...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • January 30 2025

Finding His Niche: Actor/Playwright Parker Davis Gray Carves out his place

Parker Davis Gray is not afraid to be weird. The SMU theater grad has played silly, sinister, sympathetic, and sometimes just plain psychotic on basically every professional stage in Dallas-Fort Worth since 2016; if he’s not taking a risk, he’s not satisfied.
“When it seems like my calendar’s full, I’ll just go and give myself something else to do,” Gray laughs. “I’m all about stretching different muscles.”
Coming from the small Texas town of Combine, about 30 minutes southeast of Dallas, Gray a...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • January 23 2025

An Enigmatic Woman: Marisol’s Big Works Get an Even Bigger Retrospective at Dallas Museum of Art

Her name was synonymous with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and other iconic Pop artists of the 1960s. But few today remember Marisol Escobar or her ahead-of-its-time art, which provocatively explored femininity and women’s role in society.
“She was so extremely successful in her day but departed from the art-world limelight by her own choice,” says Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, DMA’s senior curator of contemporary art, who assisted originating institution Buffalo AKG Art Museum with building the...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • December 31 2024

The Hills are Alive with a Pair of Mickle Mahers, Noises Off, Die Hard, Tharp, Cinderella’s Rats and so much more: The 2024 Season Wrap up

It’s that time of year again, when we gather on the page to consider all the shows that we have seen, what stood out, who wowed us, and more. As usual, we are never brief. Grab a snack or two or three, some tasty nog, plan on a nap midway through, and enjoy musings from a gaggle of our trusted performing arts writers.
Lindsey Wilson: I’ve been a bit of a Scrooge this year when it comes to holiday-themed shows, but if you’re seeking glamour, glitter, and lots of soapy family drama, then you can’t...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • December 15 2024

Born to Lead: Circle Theatre’s New Artistic Director Ashley H. White Isn’t Afraid to Shake Things Up

When Imprint Theatreworks closed at the end of 2022, Ashley H. White found herself at a crossroads. The founding artistic director had spent the previous five years producing some of the most ambitious and original theater that Dallas audiences had experienced in a good long while, but ultimately the nonprofit just couldn’t survive the pandemic’s decimation of regional theater.
“I have a sign on my desk that says, ‘if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you,’” White laughs, adding, “and...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • December 15 2024

Beauty and Repulsion, Decay and Renewal: Jessica Kruetter at Galveston Arts Center

We may be made of star stuff, according to Carl Sagan, but the way Jessica Kreutter sees it we are all made of dirt.
Kreutter’s sculptures—though she prefers to call them ceramic assemblages—literally take pieces of the earth (clay) and sometimes found objects to echo the natural cycle of decay and renewal. But for “Collapse,” her latest exhibition now running at the Galveston Arts Center through Feb. 16, 2025, Kreutter is revisiting, reviving, and reforming some of her earlier works into entire...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • October 10 2024

Cheers to 15 Years: Bruce Wood Dance Dallas isn’t afraid to mix things up for 2025

For its 15th year, Bruce Wood Dance is gifting itself a new name. The contemporary dance company, which is a new iteration of the original founded in Fort Worth by Wood in 1996, has officially rebranded as Bruce Wood Dance Dallas. This is not meant to drive a wedge between the two North Texas cities, but instead broadcast a sense of place as the troupe continues to tour and bring in big-name guest talent from around the globe.
The new name is already enticing admirers, as is evidenced by its sta...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • September 24 2024

Through An Inclusive Lens: Diversity and divas populate Uptown Players’ 2024-25 season

Regional premieres abound for Uptown Players’ 23rd season, offering Dallas audiences several new ways to view love, self-discovery, and diversity onstage. These are the cornerstones of Uptown Players, after all, which is known as Dallas-Fort Worth’s preeminent LGBTQ+ theater company. Its mission since 2001 has been to create greater positive public awareness and acceptance by bringing inclusive and engaging theater to the Dallas community.
It all kicks off Dec. 6-15, 2024, with the regional prem...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • September 23 2024

A Culture of Women: Now in its sixth year, Vignette Art Fair continues to promote women artists

There is no shortage of artistic talent in Texas, but each year is another chance for the Vignette Art Fair in Dallas to remind us once again of how skilled and creative the women of the Lone Star State truly are.
Last year’s fair received a record number of applications, and this year’s submissions were equally plentiful, with the official tally topping 200. A total of 36 artists—from Aubrey to Amarillo, Richardson to Round Rock, Houston to Highland Village—will be featured Oct. 17-19 at Dallas...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • August 27 2024

Theater with a Capital T: Big titles connect Stage West to the community in 2024-25

After an unprecedented 2023, where it grew and thrived in the face of post-pandemic uncertainty, Stage West is continuing to flourish. But the Fort Worth theater is always careful to remember its purpose.
Artistic director Dana Schultes is so committed to building her audience that she even opened up Stage West’s building, which houses two performance spaces, to long-running improv comedy troupe Four Day Weekend, which just ended its 27-year relationship with Sundance Square.
“When we learned Fo...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • August 17 2024

Sharing Our Stories: Cara Mía Theatre’s 2024-25 season strengthens connection across borders

It’s the largest Latinx theater company in Texas, but Dallas’s Cara Mía Theatre is making waves that ripple far outside the Lone Star State. During its 2023-24 season alone, the 1996-founded Dallas company toured three of its original plays: Crystal City 1969 in San Antonio, Orígenes in Mexico City, and Ursula or let yourself go with the wind in Bogota and Chía, Colombia.
And so they’re bringing back the Latinidades Festival & Symposium for a fifth year, as the first offering in their 2024-25 se...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 30 2024

Connecting Art to Hearts: Dallas’ contemporary Conduit Gallery celebrates 40 years

They say to do what you love, and Nancy Whitenack loves art. “But I’m really lousy at it,” she laughs. “I intend in my golden years to take clay classes, but what I’ve always liked to do more than anything in the world is go to galleries and museums.”
The space was twice as big and much more expensive than any she had rented before, but Whitenack knew that if the prospect seemed frightening, then that meant she had to go for it. Now at 1626 Hi Line Dr. for the past 22 years, Conduit Gallery is c...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 23 2024

Material Girl: Jean Shin clothes the Amon Carter’s ‘Museum Body’

In our current era of fast fashion and 15-second TikTok videos, Jean Shin is looking for permanence, or at least a way to honor the people whose work and energy is directed at one common goal, at one specific place, during one particular point in time.
In both commissions, Shin snips the seams of these discarded garments and uses the textiles to create a large-scale wall mural that’s topped with a soft skeletal structure of shoelaces, suspenders, lanyards, undergarments, and more hanging above....

benton buckley books • July 1 2024

Bespoke: A Philosophy of Beauty

/be-spok/: a philosophy of beauty – A curated collection of 35 of the world’s most innovative, visionary interior designers, /be-spok/ shares custom, curated, bold design that is both timeless and provocative. Each comprehensive interior design project is exhibited in a 12-page gallery with an editorial speaking to each designer’s ethos. Beyond the aesthetic allure, this book honors the collaborative spirit of design. It recognizes that great design is often the result of many hands and minds co...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • June 17 2024

From Page to Stage: Dallas Theater Center’s resident playwright Jonathan Norton is ready to lead

If you see Jonathan Norton at the theater, he wants you to stop and say, “Hi.” The longtime playwright is relishing the more public-facing opportunities that come with his new appointment as interim artistic director of Dallas Theater Center, and greeting audience members is definitely one of them.
The Dallas-raised Norton has a long association with DTC, having seen his first play there (Adrian Hall’s production of A Christmas Carol) in sixth grade. “At the time, sixth-grade me could not have i...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • June 11 2024

Top Arts: In 2024, the Dallas Arts District is finally crowned the best in America

I moved to Dallas in October 2009, the same month and year that the AT&T Performing Arts Center opened. The city was buzzing, I remember, so incredibly proud and excited to finally welcome people to the ruby-red Winspear Opera House, along with the outdoor Annette Strauss Square, strikingly silver Wyly Theatre, and Sammons Park, home of many open-air performances and the famous reflecting pond. ATTPAC completed (at the time) the Dallas Arts District, which at 118 acres is the largest contiguous...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • June 11 2024

Don’t Blink: Dallas Museum of Art stares down race, gender, and identity with ‘When You See Me’

The Dallas Museum of Art recently acquired several new works from TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, and it was this expansion of its permanent collection that inspired When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History, on view now through April 13, 2025.
It’s co-curated by the museum’s entire contemporary art department: senior curator Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, curator Dr. Vivian Li, assistant curator Ade Omotosho, and curatorial assistant Veronica Myers.
“With this recurring theme about...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • May 26 2024

Art in Dark Places: Artists Sans Frontières comforts a world in crisis with the healing power of performing arts

In 2017, Dallas-based dancer and choreographer Katie Burks felt compelled to offer aid and assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Upon arrival in Houston, however, she quickly realized that she was well-meaning but ill-prepared, and not trained as a first responder or member of the military. But she became hooked on helping people and continued her humanitarian efforts until leaving the next year for grad school in London. Multiple performance and teaching opportunities across Europe,...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • May 26 2024

All Together Now: Unexpected premieres and cherished favorites blend in TITAS/Dance Unbound’s new season

For more than 40 years, TITAS/Dance Unbound has been bringing in dance companies that entertain, educate, and inspire Dallas audiences, and its 2024-25 season is no exception. With two Texas premieres, one world premiere, and a lineup that hails from Spain, New Zealand, and America, the nine-company season, titled “Unexpected,” is a sumptuous buffet of innovative dance.
The season opener will even make a personal appearance, adding yet another layer of live excitement. Twyla Tharp’s longstanding...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 14 2024

A Lifelong Exploration: Director Sasha Maya Ada navigates a new path for DFW theater

Listen to how she says “pecans,” and you’ll know immediately that Sasha Maya Ada is not a native Texan. But the Bronx-born and South Carolina-raised director, actor, educator, and SMU graduate is nonetheless deeply committed to making the Dallas-Fort Worth theater industry better than it was when she moved here in 2012.
It feels like Ada has touched practically every professional production in North Texas these past few years, from forward-thinking plays to classic musicals to new works, spannin...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 14 2024

Soy de Tejas: Traveling exhibition unites the Lone Star State in Fort Worth with Latinx art

In a state as vast as Texas, how do you go about building a survey that encompasses the Latinx population’s art? Because this is Texas, you go big. Rigoberto Luna curated nearly 100 contemporary works of all mediums by native Texas and Texas-based Latinx artists into Soy de Tejas, which was originally exhibited in San Antonio in 2023. Now the massive collection is on display at Arts Fort Worth through June 23, 2024, exploring themes of identity, migration, mythmaking, displacement, and indigenei...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 8 2024

Texas Studio: Evita Tezeno on collaging Black joy

“I came out of the womb and knew I wanted to be an artist. It’s all I know.” Growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, Evita Tezeno was surrounded by female relatives who were quilters and seamstresses. Little bits of fabric could always be found around the house, and it’s this patchwork, folk-art style that has inspired Tezeno’s immensely popular collage paintings since the beginning of the 21st century.
Tezeno’s paintings overflow with Black joy: colorful, harmonious scenes of Black Americans dancing,...