Dallas News Blog

This is among the Joe Kubert pieces Heritage Auction Galleries is selling off beginning this weekend

​The front page of this morning's New York Times Arts section draws our attention (heh) to the treasure trove of comic-book art sitting directly across the street from Unfair Park HQ: 83-year-old comic-book artist Joe Kubert has decided to sell off his collection of originals via Heritage Auction Galleries, beginning with an auction this weekend.

It's a wide-ranging, belongs-in-a-museum collection that dates back to 1944's illustration of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (among 'em, Green Arrow and Vigilante) and contains iconic war-story art (including the 1963 Sgt. Rock story "Young Soldiers Never Cry") and superhero stuff (this 1990 cover for The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told, featuring Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and the exhausted artist himself slumped over a drafting table).

The Oak Lawn-based Heritage, of course, cemented its rep as a pop-culture clearing house by selling off the comic-book collections of Nicolas Cage and Stan Lee; Thomas Jane is a regular customer for original pieces like Kubert's. So why's Kubert selling? "I have no undying love for any of the stuff," he tells The Times, which guesstimates that most of the pieces will sell for upwards of $3,000 to $4,000 -- reasonable. And who's buying? "The people who collect the stuff are so emotionally attached it," says Todd Hignite, Heritage's comics consignment director. This morning, my son begged me to buy him this piece for Hanukkah; I told him to save the front page of The Times's Arts section instead. He was not pleased -- too emotionally attached.

HOME? from Willie Baronet on Vimeo.

I hate that I couldn't make the first night of the final show in Hal Samples Gallery on Main Street -- it's become a sort-of home-away-from for my family and me in recent months. Alas, Willie Baronet's HOME? will be there till November 28, available by appointment only; the phone number's on the gallery's home page. Till then, then, Baronet's prepared for you Web browsers a slightly altered version of the video he debuted at the show last night; awful kind of him. Here too is an unedited excerpt from the statement he wrote for the show:

Since 1993 Ive been buying and collecting homeless signs from people on the streets, in subways, under bridges, in cities near and far. It began from an awkwardness I felt when Id pull up to an intersection and encounter a person holding a sign, asking for help. Like many people I wrestled with whether or not I was doing good by giving them money, wondered if they would spend the money on food or alcohol or drugs. Mostly I struggled with my moral obligations, and how my own choices contributed in conscious or unconscious ways to the poverty I was witnessing. I struggled with the unfairness of the lives people are born into, the physical, mental and psychological handicaps. And in my struggle I often avoided eye contact with those on the street, unwilling to really see them, and in doing so avoided seeing parts of myself.

​In this morning's item about the late, great Don Ivan Punchatz, Jeff Liles drops a comment to remind us of the TCU illustration prof's estimable contribution to the local music scene. Writes Jeff, he "also created that amazing cover illustration for Biting on Tin Foil, the first Three on a Hill vinyl EP on Deep Ellum Records," which Jeff actually released. (There are two copies for sale on the eBays.) Turns out, long-ago Three on a Hill frontman Peter Schmidt remembers how the cover came about like it was yesterday:

"I was friends with his son Greg, who used to come see Three on a Hill a lot," says Schmidt. "He's a nice guy himself. And one day, Greg said, 'Hey, my dad's an artist, why don't you get him to do the album cover?' At the very beginning, I didn't understand the scope of who he was. I just knew he was a real artist and my friend's dad, and I thought it would be neat. But as we went through the process, I very quickly got an idea about what a big deal he was."

National Lampoon Covers

Among Don Ivan Punchatz's most familiar works is the cover for the November 1974 National Lampoon.

​Spent the better part of the morning looking at the artwork of Don Ivan Punchatz, the New Jersey-born illustrator and TCU adjunct design professor for 40 years who died last Thursday in an Arlington hospital following cardiac arrest earlier this month. Punchatz's résumé is the stuff of pop-art-world legend: from National Geographic to National Lampoon to the National Portrait Gallery sort of says it all, but leaves out, well, almost everything. Hence, his lengthy obituary this morning in The New York Times, in which Steven Heller writes:

Punchatz was a skilled hyperrealist with a penchant for the fantastic and absurd. His cover art for works like Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy and Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" anthology was a striking blend of romantic metaphor and supernatural fantasy -- what one colleague called "elegantly weird." ... He was associated with the illustrative genre of fantasy known as magic realism, but he could also be a playful satirist for magazines like Playboy, Esquire and Rolling Stone.

Punchatz, who turned 73 last month and whose son Greg is best known for his work at Janimation in Dallas, was also the man who made Doom (or, at least, the legendary cover art for id's original offering). And his SketchPad Studio off Cooper Street in Arlington was where the likes of Gary Panter (best known, perhaps, as the head set designer for Pee-Wee's Playhouse) apprenticed on their way to fame.

Photos by Danny Fulgencio

A startling look down private health care's profit-hungry Pac-Man gullet.

​First off, how can something be a "flash mob" when local media's tipped off to the happening, oh, a week before it's scheduled with a press release? Second, it's awful hard to make a statement out of a conceptual-art event tied to health-care reform; yellow ponchos don't have quite the same impact as a "Youth in Asia Will Kill Your Grandma" sign. And: Don't promise thousands when you deliver ... oh ... a hundred, maybe?

There's a word for what happened Sunday, when the Dallas Professional Artists' Coalition took their health-care protest to the Arts District: anti-climactic. Donned in their canary-colored trash bags, PAC reps formed a Pac-Man (or so we think) as a metaphor for the health care industry's unbridled consumption, said organizers. (Actually, as you can see, they didn't so much form a Pac-Man so much as stand in the chalk outline of the video-game character.) It also had something to do with creating solidarity amongst local artists and building momentum toward "an art-friendly solution to the health care crisis." More photos of the happening follow after the jump.

Don't worry, though. We've got better dress-up items forthcoming from the weekend. Five words: "Princess Leia slave-girl costume." Happy early Halloween.

Paul Baker

​In April 2008, our Elaine Liner spoke with Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty about his "once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing" meeting with DTC founder Paul Baker, who actor Charles Laughton once famously called "irritating, arrogant, nuts -- and a genius ... one of the most important minds in the world theater today." There have been countless tales told about Baker, the Hereford-born, Waxahachie-raised visionary behind the DTC, who came to Dallas in '59 to act as its first artistic director while also teaching at Baylor; there's even been a book by and about the man, Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities, not to mention the Dallas-based Baker Idea Institute that continues to spread a gospel best illustrated in his adaptation of Hamlet, Hamlet ESP, which debuted at the Kalita Humphreys exactly 39 years tomorrow. Wrote Baker in the intro to the published play, in which three actors played the title role, "This is the clearest HAMLET yet to be presented." Take that, Bill Shakespeare.

But this morning, Elaine sends words of the final chapter: Baker died yesterday at his home in Waelder, southeast of Austin. Baker, who left the DTC in 1982, was 98. Mark Lowry at Theater Jones has the obituary, which runs just as the Dallas Theater Center moves into its new home at the Wyly Theatre in the AT&T Performing Arts Center.

Update at 6 p.m.: Theater Jones has posted this interview with Baker, recorded in May of this year. It's the first of several forthcoming, and in it he talks about "arriving in Dallas and not settling in as easily as he thought he would; former Dallas Morning News critic John Rosenfield; and the great Margo Jones."

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Saint Rufina, one of two pieces of artwork in the Meadows Museum stolen by the Nazis in 1941

​So, I just spoke with Robert Edsel concerning those two paintings at the SMU Meadows Museum his Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art publicly identified as having been stolen from the the Rothschild family in Paris in 1941 by the Nazis. He did not have much time to talk -- Edsel is, at this very moment, in Washington, D.C., attending a conference dealing with the restitution of the rightful owners of looted artwork, matter of fact. But he says he finds Meadows Museum director Mark Roglán's statement concerning the revelation -- which reads, in part, "neither Mr. Edsel nor his associates has ever presented SMU with any evidence that would question whether the paintings were properly restituted" -- both "bewildering" and "bothersome."

Why? Because, Edsel says, two and a half years ago, he first contacted Meadows and SMU officials about the likelihood that Bartolome Esteban Murillo's portraits of Seville's patron saints Justa and Rufina had been stolen by the Nazis. He says he asked to come over to view the pieces to check the backs for the official Nazi code indicating that they'd once belonged to the Rothschilds. At first, Edsel says, officials would only allow access to photos. "They said they did not believe their provenence was wrong," Edsel says. "And they send pictures, which wasn't what we wanted to see."

In April 2007, Edsel says, he and his investigators -- including Patricia Teter of the Getty Research Institute -- were allowed access to the painting themselves. At which point, they found what they were looking for.

Bartolome Esteban Murillo's Saint Justa

​A Friend of Unfair Park alerts us to the news that Robert Edsel -- founder of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, which scours the globe for the millions of pieces of art stolen by Hitler and the Nazis -- found two such items on the campus of his alma mater, SMU. Specifically, they were discovered in the Meadows Museum, according to yesterday's breaking-news release. They are: "a pair of famous paintings on display at SMU's Meadows Museum created by Spanish master Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) of Seville's Patron Saints Justa and Rufina, estimated to be worth more than $10 million, are believed to have been stolen from the Rothschild family in Paris in 1941."

We've got calls into Edsel and Meadows director Mark Roglán for further information concerning the discovery. But, till then, there's this from the release:

The Nazi ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) code evidencing Rothschild ownership is still visible on the stretcher bar of one of the paintings; it appears to have been rubbed off the other. The Monuments Men Foundation, recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal for its work preserving the legacy of these unknown heroes, which it received from the President of the United States at a White House ceremony, is continuing its research to document conclusively whether both paintings were properly restituted to the rightful owners prior to donation to the Meadows Museum.

The Monuments Men Foundation has provided the documentation for both discoveries -- here for Saint Justa; here for Saint Rufina. Ironically, on its Web site, the Meadows features a section called "Collections Provenance," in which it details the process by which it checks its acquisitions' origins. And the museum addresses the very issue raised by the new discovery: "Knowledge of an object's provenance is important for fully understanding the artwork's history -- this is especially critical when dealing with works that may have changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era." Sprechen sie d'oh!

Update at 12:46 p.m.: Patti LaSalle, exec director in SMU's Office of Public Affairs, just sent Unfair Park a statement from Mark Roglán concerning Edsel's announcement. It follows after the jump. Spoiler alert: The director says everyone's always known these were pieces confiscated by the Nazis.

​Speaking of local music artifacts and eight-track tapes ...

Here's the poster for James "Big Bucks" Burnett's upcoming exhibit at the Barry Whistler Gallery. Because how else will you get people to look at 500 sealed Rutles eight-tracks "in their original shipping boxes"? Sigh. Dolly Python's amazing, but I kinda miss 14 Records.

Jennifer Conley/www.iliveindallas.com

From the opening of Guerilla Arts on Haskell Avenue this weekend

​Over on Renegade Bus, Joshua Goode brings word of "a major opening this week that could give the Dallas arts community the extra boost it has long needed": Guerilla Arts on Haskell Avenue, in the former home of the Viet Nam Veterans Motorcycle Club. It's the brainchild of Patrick Short, who spells out the nonprofit's mission in the 15-page manifesto posted to the GA Web site: "To nurture emerging contemporary artists in Texas by providing them with exhibition opportunities, work space and teaching experience through a paid residency."

Goode, himself an SMU BFA and visual artist, was there for the "jam-packed" opening weekend and notes that it felt more like Brooklyn than Dallas: "People crowded into the space openly engaging with the art and launching into a critical dialogue free of the usual Dallas pretention." According to the manifesto, the space is due to be fully realized by January.

Patrick Michels

Inside the Wyly Theatre yesterday, during the media tour

​In all the coverage of the AT&T Performing Arts Center's opening this week (and, remember, there's a free open house Sunday), I'd yet to see anything showing just how the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre interior morphs from intimate to epic, its key selling point. Then I stumbled across this page from Theatre Projects Consultants, the Connecticut-based firm charged with actually designing the "versatile, multiform space that can be configured for up to 575 seats in proscenium, thrust, traverse, and flat floor arrangements."

So happens, Theatre Projects hired Stewart Mayer to shoot some footage of the crew giving the theater a test-run two weeks ago. Mayer, the local cinematographer behind Kickass Camera, put together a remarkable time-lapse video; he and Theatre Projects were kind enough to let us offer it on Unfair Park. (Update: the high def version is included below Though this is a temp file -- a high-def version is coming tonight. So, for now, enjoy this one, featuring our Friday-morning musical selection circa 1927, the Dallas String Band's "Dallas Rag.") Mayer tells Unfair Park about the shoot: "It was fantastic. The whole building is a giant Transformer. It's bad-ass. It is absolutely amazing. It was really cool to see." See for yourself.

Patrick Michels

Winspear Opera House architect Norman Foster talks to reporters Thursday morning. Check out more photos from inside the Performing Arts Center in our slide show.

​

Patrick Michels

A view from the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House on Monday, when it made its official bow

​Another day, another review of the AT&T Performing Arts Center -- this one from Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times, whose assessment graces the top of this morning's Arts section. (You remember Nic -- he's the one who called Cowboys Stadium "a somewhat crude reworking of old ideas" last month. And he was right.) He's far more impressed after this trip to town: He's stunned that the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater, which made its bow last night with a Bruce Willis howdy-do, is "so good" given that it was born out of a break-up between Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, who no longer speak. The coolest part? The theater's ever-changing interior, of course, capable of accommodating productions enormous and intimate and in between. Still, a few complaints: "The walls and ceiling of an upper-level terrace are covered in artificial turf, a superficial flourish that is out of character with the rest of the design." And: "The building's unevenly striated aluminum surface, meanwhile, feels dull and its facades surprisingly tame."

As for Norman Foster's Winspear -- where, we learned yesterday, the seats are wide enough to accommodate big bottoms -- he says the lobby is a reworking of Charles Garnier's Paris Opera, while the main performance hall "is an elegant if familiar space that is more about putting you at ease than about sex appeal." (In other words: It's no Walt Disney Concert Hall, but what is?) So, the final verdict?

Taken with the Wyly Theater's design, [the Winspear] is a welcome contribution to this city's growing cultural district, helping to fill it out with the kind of strong, serious forms that can begin to give Dallas the cultural presence that it has never had. The no-nonsense approach of these buildings -- one cautiously experimental, the other more backward looking -- should fit nicely in our new era of cautious restraint, even if they were designed when the excesses were still not over.

There's also a slide show. Its headline: "A Cultural Heart for Big D." Aw.

Patrick Michels

​At 8 p.m. tomorrow, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House gets its proper christening with performances by mezzo-soprano Denyce Grave, baritone Thomas Hampson, Morphoses choreographer Christopher Wheeldon in a piece commissioned for the AT&T Performing Arts Center's opening week. Given the Winspear's London roots -- it was designed, after all, by Foster + Partners -- the Guardian today weighs in with a what-for that asks whether Dallas is now home to the "opera theatre for the 21st century." Ed Pilkington also asks Spencer de Grey, the project's lead architect, about why the Winspear has 1,100 fewer seats than the Music Hall at Fair Park:

They reduced the number of seats from 3,300 in Dallas's old opera house to 2,200 -- slightly more than Covent Garden but substantially fewer than New York's Metropolitan Opera -- mainly to enhance the dramatic experience, but also partly in recognition that in this age, seats have to be larger. "People want wider seats, as basically they have bigger bottoms," de Grey said. "It's a very compact space. People can't believe it has so many seats in such a small area."

On a related note, will Spinal Tap ever play the Winspear? Should.

Patrick Michels

New York-based artist Leni Schwendinger under her first of five Main Street Garden light sculptures Monday night, displaying its autumn color scheme.

​Light sculpture artist Leni Schwendinger and her team spent Monday evening downtown, programming the seasonal color schemes on the first of her installations on the site that, come November 5, will be the new Main Street Garden.

The first of her SpectraScape structures is more or less complete: a pair of green glass panels, each bending at a 90-degree angle into a roof. Seen from the right angle, Schwendinger pointed out, the roofs form a "V" that echoes the modern shape of the old Statler Hilton across the street. The park will include five of these setups, each with seating underneath and, of course, a line of multicolored lights crawling along the top.

At 9:15 Monday night, Schwendinger said they'd just finished programming each of the four color schemes the installations will display over the course of a year, plus an all-white display that'll run for about 20 minutes each night at dusk. After that, she said, the light program will run clear on through till, you know, "whenever the bars close."

Photos by Patrick Michels

Mayor Tom Leppert and council member Angela Hunt closed out Monday morning's ceremony with some thespian assistance.

​

​Monday's the big day -- the grand opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, which kicks off at 8 a.m. with South Pacific star Keala Settle performing the "The Star-Spangled Banner" before AT&T PAC president and CEO Mark Nerenhausen, Mayor Tom Leppert and other city officials play ball. Hence yet another national-press piece concerning the AT&TPAC's impact on Dallas and downtown -- this one from former Observer-er Tom Korosec, writing for Bloomberg News that it's just as well the original Arts District plan, conceived in '78 and formalized in '82 by Sasaki Associates didn't work out as quite as planned. Says Margaret McDermott, "We were lucky it failed." (Alexander Garvin, who wrote critically about it in his 2002 book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, would agree.)

Still, as Newsweek pointed out one week ago, a performing arts center doesn't a city make. And ancillary developments around the AT&TPAC have been put on hold for myriad reasons, most of which, say Lucy Billingsley, rhyme with "economy." To which SMU prof and Dallas historian Darwin Payne says, "Dallas civic leaders and big-money people love to say we're the biggest and best. I can't imagine another city trying to build it in quite the same way."

An abstract Duvan Lopez Yepez painting, among the Derrill Osborn items up for grabs next week.

​When my former colleague Christina Rees says Dallas print media needs to get off its ass and properly cover the visual arts, this probably isn't exactly what she means. Nevertheless, I now direct your attention to the 350-plus cow paintings and sculptures and whatnots being auctioned off October 14 at the Dallas Auction Gallery per the instructions of their owner, Derrill Osborn, the former longtime head of Neiman Marcus' men's fashion division (a "men's wear maestro," matter of fact) who wants to clear the clutter from his Oak Lawn town home. And lest you think this a novelty item, well, it did merit a piece (scroll down) in this morning's New York Times, in which Osborn, owner of the greatest facial hair in the history of follicles and an exquisite dresser, explains his love affair with four-legged art: "People don't normally associate cows with elegance. But this is the best of the best in the bovine world. It isn't the potholders, dishrags and ice cream scoops you might imagine."

​We first took a long, hard look at Jaume Plensa's Sho, otherwise known as the 13-foot-tall head that weighs 600 pounds, back in August, when SMU's Meadows Museum announced its acquisition. But the sculpture rears its lovely head tonight with the official unveiling as the Meadows reopens the redesigned plaza and sculpture garden at 6 p.m. Says The Official Release from high on the Hilltop:

The dedication launches a celebration of the Elizabeth Meadows Sculpture Collection with the exhibition "Face and Form: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in the Meadows Collection." The new plaza will feature a permanent installation of monumental sculpture from the Elizabeth Meadows Collection and the Meadows Museum by artists such as Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, and Claes Oldenburg. ...

Santiago Calatrava's Wave, already a fixture of the plaza's southwest corner, can now be viewed from above from a terrace donated by Richard and Gwen Irwin in honor of his parents, William and Florence Irwin. A staircase, which can be approached from each side, will help integrate the plaza with the rest of the campus, while a new fountain at its foot will greet museum visitors.

Calatrava's Wave, incidentally, is what most of Schutze's dreams look like. Speaking of, it's supposed to rain, what, four inches between tomorrow and Friday? Hmmm, I wonder where Jim'll be later this week. (That thing's still stuck on September 30?)

​In the October 12 issue of Newsweek, Cathleen McGuigan takes a visit to the AT&T Performing Arts Center and tells Lincoln Center to watch out. Well, more or less: "Lincoln Center is still the country's premier cultural complex, but it's getting competition from an ambitious project in -- are you ready for it, New Yorkers? -- Dallas." But she wonders the same thing everyone else has been asking since, oh, 1988, maybe? As in: Does an Arts District a "city" make? Writes McGuigan:

Dallas audiences will certainly explore the new complex and the surrounding public space. But weaving it all together to create a dense and urbane neigh-borhood requires more than dramatic buildings by famous architects. Ask the people in another car-centric city: Los Angeles, where the vaunted Disney Concert Hall (also by Gehry) has had almost no effect on creating a street life downtown, even though Gehry proposed a plan, never instigated, to help do just that. "It's almost impossible to design a city," [Renzo] Piano, architect of the Nasher Sculpture Center in the Dallas arts district, once said. "What makes a city beautiful is that it's not designed. Time makes cities beautiful."

Nina Kotova

​Beginning Thursday through Sunday, Nina Kotova will sit in with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, as the acclaimed Russian cellist makes her Texas Instruments Classical Series bow. Hers is a particularly special debut in Dallas, as the occasional University of Texas at Austin visiting artist, former Charlie Rose guest and one-time model will world-premiere "Cello Concerto" penned by her good friend and 41-year-old Dallas native Christopher Theofanidis -- a piece she commissioned, matter of fact. The classical-music blog Sequenza21 today features an audio interview with Kotova, who talks about the long-distance collaboration that's been a work in progress for two years.

For those who missed Part One of Mort Meyerson's 20-minute doc, made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the concert hall that bears his name, it's right here. You might want to watch that before you view Part Two, in which things get Curb Your Enthusiasm tense during the construction.

​The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center opened its doors in September 1989 -- seems like only 18 years ago. Accordingly, there are big doings at I.M. Pei's palace on September 27 -- a free open house that'll include the intriguingly advertised "instrument petting zoo." And if you've got a few spare moments, Meyerson's 2MCompanies Inc. just posted Part One of a making-of doc, and it's quite the revealing flashback from the man who says toward the end that "I'm really not a public person" when explaining his reluctance to let H. Ross Perot bestow upon the joint Meyerson's name. I'll post Part Two when it becomes available.

​Yesterday came the big announcement: AT&T done bought itself the naming rights to the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. But there was one glaring omission in the press release's fine print: How much did the company pay? That troubles New York Times arts and business writer Judith Dobrzynski, who also maintains the Real Clear Arts culture blog: Stephen Becker directs our attention to her Tuesday-night post in which Dobrzynski writes that AT&T's refusal to provide the dollar amount doesn't make sense ... and could come back to bite the giant in the ass:

How are people going to judge whether this is a fair deal or whether AT&T bargained too hard? And how are AT&T shareholders going to know whether they're getting their money's worth?

Eventually, the numbers usually out. Why hide in the meantime? It looks suspicious.

And here's another thing we don't know: how long does this deal last? AT&T did say that it would offer free WiFi throughout the 10-acre complex.

​I'm a big fan of illustrator Jack Unruh's -- you probably are too if you've seen his work in, oh, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Time or ... look, you name it. The man ain't in the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame for nothing. He's a good. So, funny thing: I was looking for something on eBay and stumbled across this circa-1970s piece the Dallas-based illustrator did of the Dallas Convention Center.

I called Unruh to ask him about it. He didn't know what in the hell I was talking about, so I sent him the link. He took one look at it and insisted, nope, not his. Then he looked at it a little harder.

A close-up from Jack Unruh's Dallas Convention Center piece

​"I would not ever have recognized it, but I recognize the signature," he said. "Boy, if that ain't a crappy-ass painting. It's a wonder I ever survived." He laughed, long and hard. "I think I'd pay $110 to burn the sumbitch."

But, I told him, you're in the illustrators' hall of fame. That price tag seems like a hell of a good deal.

"Mistakes are made every day," he said. "I wonder where in the hell they came up with this thing."

Then he read aloud the description: "This is an incredible piece of original 1970s illustration art for the Dallas Convention Center." He stopped, then laughed again.

"Didn't say good," Unruh said. "Just said 'incredible piece.' That doesn't mean good."

Act now, before our art director Alexander Flores does. 'Cause as far as he's concerned, $110 is a steal for a piece by a local legend.

​The official press release arrived early this morning, along with the official newspaper: The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is now the AT&T Performing Arts Center. (Or both, per the Web site.) Nobody's saying how much AT&T's spending on the naming rights, only that the package includes "cutting edge communications technology," or "Wi-Fi" for short. Naturally, Mark Nerenhausen, president and CEO of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, is tickled by the partnership.

"AT&T not only provides vital support that advances the Center's educational, cultural and civic mission, but also frees us to focus our energies on programming, raising capital funds, building our endowment and raising funds toward programming and operations," he says in the Official Statement. "AT&T's involvement ensures that when the AT&T Performing Arts Center opens in October it will become a cornerstone of our cultural community and an economic and cultural catalyst for the region." He then added, "AT&T, AT&T, AT&T, AT&T, AT&T."

The full release, full of fun facts concerning Opening Week in October, is after the jump. I've since forwarded it to Schutze, a true believer in the Dallas arts community.

Megan Feldman

Teri Lueders, Toxicity

​On Friday evening, dozens of nature lovers and art fans converged on Fair Park's Texas Discovery Gardens for the opening of Global Swarming, a show of oil and encaustic artwork that explores Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that's destroying bee colonies worldwide and has farmers in a panic. The collection of local artists -- who will be conducting educational workshops in the gardens' classroom during the State Fair -- used beeswax, pigment and collage to make points about the problem, whose cause remains unclear but is thought to be tied to pesticides and genetically modified foods.

"I'm a naturalist, but I'm also an artist, and those things go together really well," said Janet Reynolds, the show's curator and a painting teacher who gives classes out of her Little Forest Hills home and Deep Ellum studio. "We want to raise awareness and get the word out about Colony Collapse Disorder."

One of the Richard Ross pieces that will be up for auction tomorrow at The Whole Show in Deep Ellum

​Those with blank walls and no Saturday night plans had best take note: Kettle Art down in Deep Ellum's the site of The Whole Show tomorrow, a silent auction during which ... lessee if I counted this right ... 47 artists will be selling off their works to the highest bidder. Word is, opening bids all commence at the $25 mark, a steal when you consider the high-priced talent amongst the roster of those on hand and on the wall tomorrow:

Alexandra Harris, Amber Campagna, Andrew Tolentino, Ange Fitzgerald, Barry Kooda, Brian Crawford, Brittney Scheffer, Cathey Miller, Cheryl Baker, Chris Doucet, Clint Scism, Corey Godfrey, Courtney Huntress, Dylan Hollingsworth, Edward Ruiz, Erica Felicella, Frank Campagna, George Fowler, George Wallace III, Guy Reynolds, Hal Samples, Havi Frost, Herbert Wright, Jason Ice, Jessie Smith, Jonathon Kimbrell, Jorge Dominguez, Kate Mackley, Levi Leddy, Mark Nelson, Michelle McLaughlin, Mike Salcido, Pat Ramseur, Patrick Chad Young, Orlando Hernandez Cerda, Randy Dillon, Richard Brannin, Richard Ross, Rick Fender, Rob Conover, Rosalinda Gomez, Scott Dorn, Scott Mankoff, Sean Fitzgerald, Susan Migdol, Travis Bush and Tyson Summers

The bidding commences at 7 p.m. And speaking of Jonathon Kimbrell, this reminder: Tonight at The Soda Gallery is the kick-off for his new line of Junkytees, Deathray of Sunshine.

Jonathan Kimbrell

​Been spending quite a bit of time in Oak Cliff of late, and if you need me 'round 6 tomorrow eve, no doubt I'll be accompanying the 6-year-old who lives in my house to The Soda Gallery for the Star Wars Fan Appreciation Art Show -- otherwise known as "These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For," as evidenced by the three hand-printed limited-edition silk-screened posters TSG's Jonathan Kimbrell's cooked up for the event. (He's made 20 each of the posters featuring Darth Vader, Princess Leia and an Imperial Stormtrooper, though only the latter will be ready in time for purchasing at tomorrow's event.) The Napkin Art-ist says there will be 15 to 20 pieces in the show, including a contribution from Lawrence Reynolds, assembled by Boomstick Comics owner Bryan Kluger.

Then there's this interesting note found on The Soda Gallery blog: Next week at ye old pop shoppe, Kimbrell's debuting his new line of tees via his partnership with Junkytees. It's called Deathray of Sunshine, which, from the looks of the line, will appeal to fans of, oh, Johnny Cash and Betty Page and Andy Warhol, for starters.

So, tomorrow then. Maybe a bite at Eno's after.

Photos by Patrick Michels

Franz Ackermann's Meet Me At the Waterfall, over the southwest stairway.

​While the Cowboys finish saying goodbye to their old home one piece at a time, they're busy finishing up the newest feature at their digs Arlington: 14 works of contemporary art commissioned specifically for Cowboys Stadium.

From left, Charlotte Anderson, Gene Jones and Melissa Meeks, all members of the Jones family who shaped the stadium's art program.

​Gene Jones led a media tour for through the building yesterday, along with family members Charlotte Anderson and Melissa Meeks, who Jones said helped make the calls about which art to include, and where.

The works are in various stages of completion -- some hanging, finished, above the stadium's entryways, others surrounded by painting crews and plastic wrap. Jones said we can expect to see all but two of the pieces finished in time for the Cowboys' home opener September 20.

Rather than stock the place with statues of old players and coaches, Jones said artists are responding to the building and the Cowboys more subtly. The artists each toured the building, some early on in its construction, before settling on their designs. Anderson said the finished collection will reflect the ways the artists were influenced by the space, "some by light, some by glass, some by what this building will mean to the people who enter it."