IMAGE: Devon Britt-Darby and Nancy Wozny wandering the halls of Lawndale Art Center. Photo by Clara Brown/ dabfoto creative.
WELL, pills HELLO TEXAS. If you are from Houston or Dallas, search I hope you are happy to find us back on the stands under the big Texas umbrella. If you are from elsewhere, you might be wondering…Arts + Culture who? Great question.
We started in Dallas/Fort Worth, expanded to Houston, and combined forces in quest of understanding what the rest of this great state was up to, art-wise. And here we are, in our inaugural issue of Arts + Culture Texas.
As timing would have it, our emergence as a statewide magazine coincides with the fifth iteration of the Texas Biennial. Nancy Zastudil explores the evolution of the country’s longest-running statewide biennial and what’s in store this fall.
Seeing Old Sparky, the decommissioned electric chair at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, made Charissa Terranova ponder how easy it is to overlook the amount of execution-related imagery in Texas museums.
Nichelle Suzanne Strzepek gets behind the myth that the Ballet Russe bus broke down in Texas in her story about how ballet took root in Texas, while John DeMers examines the draw of the playwright over the play.
A+C visual arts editor Devon Britt-Darby talks with The Contemporary Austin director Louis Grachos about the former AMOA-Arthouse’s new incarnation and, in his Loose Ends column, checks in with Dallas Museum of Art director Max Anderson on how free general admission is broadening the DMA’s audience.
Austin choreographer Allison Orr switches from sanitation workers to linemen in PowerUP, Undermain Theatre in Dallas celebrates 30 years with a new play by Sylvan Oswald, all while Book of Mormon spreads its subversive gospel across the land. You will find these stories and more in this issue.
Whether we are new to you or a trusted arts-rag friend, we hope you will spend some time in our pages, send us your ideas, and wish us well on this new adventure, which for us, is one big, bold, and downright Texas-y move.
Here’s to the Lone Star art stomp,
NANCY WOZNY, EDITOR
nancy@artsandculturetx.com
