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After stops in Fort Worth and Denton, British artist, culture critic and broadcaster Matthew Collings ends his North Texas tour at the Nasher Sculpture Center tonight. Not sure whether he's worth your mind's precious time? Here are five reasons.

1. He's a tastemaker
And even though he surely finds that word atrocious, he embodies what it means at its most basic. Martin Kippenberger, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Gerhard Richter were on his show, BBC 2's The Late Show, before they were household names. Collings has a history of focusing on work that's challenging over ready-made for the museum.

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Installation artist Stephen Lapthisophon is legally blind and hard to define.

At one point or another, it happens to all of us: We look at art and we just don't "see it." For Stephen Lapthisophon, artist and art history professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, it's these moments he enjoys most.

"There are works of art that I love that I've been looking at for many, many years and I'm not sure I completely grasp everything that's going on," Lapthisophon says.

Lapthisophon, who is legally blind, holds court tonight at the Dallas Contemporary, the second North Texas professor to speak in the gallery's new DC University lecture series. He talks in a mix of tangents and circles, making lots of sense and blowing up that sense at the same time. There's a messiness to it, but if you believe Lapthisophon, we need more messiness in our lives.

"I think that we return to good and interesting pieces of art because they baffle us," he says. "We return to things for the mystery of things."

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Danny Fulgencio

Rick Lowe has his artist-activist sights set on one of Dallas' most troubled, but most diverse neighborhoods: Vickery Meadow.

Houston-based artist and activist Rick Lowe was in downtown Dallas last night, delivering a sort-of inaugural address for a new series of design-focused lectures for the buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a non-profit that works to remake struggling communities through design. To which you might say, "Great, another week-night lecture by a dude I've never heard of at some place I've never heard of." But what you wouldn't know unless you attended last night's lecture is that Lowe came to Dallas with a radical mission.

Lowe -- whose Project Row Houses famously helped transform one of Houston's worst neighborhoods -- announced last night that he will use grant money from the Nasher Sculpture Center to turn part of Vickery Meadow, the low-income and crime-riddled neighborhood just east of NorthPark Center, into a large art project. And considering his track record, it will likely become much more than art.

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Stephen Masker

If you knowing in you're going to make an ass out of yourself, you might as well accentuate that ass: That's the apparent conclusion the folks above came to Saturday on Greenville Avenue, where Dallas drunkenly did its thing.

You can see slideshows from the parade and our Snoop Dogg concert, and some dispatches from that concert. For now, though, settle in for some of the day's more interesting fashion choices.

Spot something weirder? Send it our way and we'll include it.

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Here's hoping you like sweaty, fawning writers, Susan Orlean.

For each of the last eight years, some of the country's best long-form journalists and memoirists have converged on a Hilton conference center in Grapevine during what always seems to be the most intolerably hot weekend of the scalding Texas summer.

Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference writer-in-residence George Getschow -- a Pulitzer finalist and an old professor of mine -- has lured luminaries including Gay Talese, Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Bowden and Ira Glass out to the North Texas 'burbs. And judging by the line-up released today, this summer won't disappoint.

The keynotes are Susan Orlean, whose Rin Tin Tin, the story of the orphaned pup that became an international sensation, just hit paperback; Rick Atkinson, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post editor and author of Liberation Trilogy and The Long Gray Line; and Skip Hollandsworth, a Texas Monthly writer whose National Magazine Award-winning Still Life made me weep shamelessly at my desk, no doubt to the dismay of fellow cube-dwellers. Hollandsworth, by the way, became a screenwriter last year with the debut of the Richard Linklater-directed Bernie, based on his account of the murder of a wealthy widow by a beloved mortician in Carthage, Texas.

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MK Asante

MK Asante walked to the stage of SMU's McFarlin Auditorium last night in a dark, slim fit jeans, a black blazer and a cool-cat hat like your grand dad used to wear. He was there for the sixth installment of the 2012-13 Tate Lecture Series, and his swagger was in full force.

He was unassuming as he spoke to an audience as eclectic as his cache of stories. A wide grin graced his face as he eyed his family among the large audience -- "Hey family!" -- and the crowd settled into their seats knowing that this wasn't going to be an old run of the mill, stale and airless lecture. This was going to be food for the soul.

At just 30 years old, Asante is a tenured professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, a bestselling author and award-winning filmmaker. Born in Zimbabwe to African-American parents, he is a recipient of the Langston Hughes Award and in 2009 was awarded a key to the city of Dallas. Some of his work includes It's Bigger than Hip-Hop, a classic manifesto that uses hip-hop as a springboard to discuss social and political issues; The Black Candle, a documentary film narrated by Maya Angelou about the birth of the Kwanzaa holiday; and 500 Years Later, a documentary filmed in over 20 countries that explores the global legacy of slavery and has won five international film festival awards.

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Troy Bradford

Led by the Instant Film Society, nearly 100 photographers, ranging from from beginners to professionals, meandered around Klyde Warren Park -- which we love, this ditty aside -- in search for the perfect analog shot on Sunday. Here are some of our favorite pics from the event.

See also: The Best Photos from This Weekend's PolaWalk in Deep Ellum

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The most dedicated and winningest rock climbing gym in Texas held a competition on Friday night, the "Big Tex Bouldering Competition," produced by Summit Climbing gym.

It was a display of super athleticism, and an exhibit of the finest climbers in Texas. Not to mention there were four kegs of beer, burgers and hot dogs, and they kept this nourishment at the bottom of the rocks where I could reach it. So that was nice.

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Justin Goode

Shot a few weeks prior to the PolaWalk to promote the event.

Over the weekend, the local Instant Film Society hosted one of its regular PolaWalk events, wherein photographers wandered the streets in search of scenes worth of their sepia-toned attention. Read about the PolaWalks here, and see some of the best photos from this weekend's event below.

See also: Share Your Love of Adorable Animals and Polaroids at Saturday's PolaWalk

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Jay Barker

Don't worry, it was just a fashion statement.

Last week we introduced our 2013 Masterminds, local artists to whom we awarded $1,000 each for their work making Dallas a stranger, more interesting place to live. And on Saturday night, we honored them at our annual Artopia culture jam, featuring art, fashion, food, music, and some seriously shiny low-riders, part of the Dallas Contemporary's new exhibition.

See also:
- Dallas Observer Masterminds 2013: Meet the Winners of Our Annual Art Awards
- The People of Dallas Observer Artopia 2013, Part One
- The People of Dallas Observer Artopia 2013, Part Two

It was as eclectic as a crowd as you'll find in this town, and everyone was quite lovely. Thanks to everyone who came. To everyone who didn't: You'll get'em next year. In the meantime, see what you missed in our slideshow, "The People of Dallas Observer Artopia 2013."