Well, trash re-contextualized. The Nasher Classroom will display from May 8 through May 15 the fruits of the FOUND OBJECT ART, a community project meant to teach local students about “found” and “readymade” art. Let’s see, a community aware art project that mixes high and low forms with a dollop of ecological awareness: where’s Sarah Jane Semrad? There she is: The project is a collaboration between SJ’s La Reunion TX, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and Dallas ISD. Six Dallas ..read more

1. This Wall Street Journal piece on the Dallas Opera’s Moby Dick offers even more details on what we can expect from the production: “I didn’t want to sing about a whale hunt; I wanted to do a whale hunt,” says director Leonard Foglia. Incidentally, the Dallas Opera isn’t the only theatrical production tackling the big whale. The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London has produced a version of the Whale Tale about an obsessive director trying to stage the epic ..read more

Pardon my interruption of the fabulous arts content to be found here on FrontRow, but I’ve come to shame you for not being more attentive to your mother.

You’re not 8 years old anymore. You can’t just cut a vaguely flower-shaped hole out of a piece of construction paper, tape it to a piece of cardboard, scribble “Happy Mother’s Day!” across the top, and consider your filial duty fulfilled. Mom really deserves better.

But what can you possibly give this year to ..read more

Something is amiss with David Sedaris. The author read from recent works at SMU on Monday night and it was impossible not to notice: David Sedaris’ new stories are not funny. Surely, James Frey is a little to blame. When A Million Little Pieces turned out to be A Million Big Exaggerations, other authors, including Sedaris, became targets. The New Republic’s Alex Heard wrote a 4,000-word piece attempting to fact check many of Sedaris’ old pieces. Turns out many of ..read more

The city’s second (really first, historically speaking) film festival kicks off today, and even though USA is playing second fiddle to Michael Cain’s Dallas International Film Festival these days, and the older festival has far fewer films, there are some pretty good movies in the line up. A good number of them are films that are going to be released in local theaters in the coming weeks, so the festival feels a little like a preview screening series this year. ..read more

Via The Art Newspaper, an $8 million court case between Miami collector Craig Robins and New York dealer David Zwirner has brought the shady dealings that define many art world transactions into the limelight, prompting many to call for a cleanup. But transparency won’t come easily. Hans Van Miegroet, Professor of Arts and Markets at Duke University:

Most dealers, and some collectors, are convinced more transparency would ruin the market. But the counter-intuitive thing is that the more transparent you are, ..read more

Doug Burr’s latest effort, O Ye Devastator is now available on iTunes – a week before its official release date, as is Sarah Jaffe’s Suburban Nature (you can check out “Clementine” off that album here). Burr has one of the tracks from the new album up on his MySpace page, “Red, Red.” It’s a straight ahead stomp with good energy for a jangly folk tune, and the banjo does for Burr’s track what the palm muted electric guitar does for ..read more

Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park, the plaza at the heart of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, was imagined as a populist urban oasis, a space that would become a destination — teeming with life day and night. Now, six months after the opening, there’s one simple problem: where are the people? Tucked away in a corner of downtown adjacent to the central business district’s ring of highways, Sammons Park is nearly always empty except when audiences are making ..read more

1. What do Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, and Whitey Ford have in common? They all appeared in ads for now-defunct Braniff International. David Johnson, who you love from PRI’s Marketplace and D CEO (wait did I miss Johnson’s departure from Marketplace?) made a documentary on the once locally-based airline, and it will screen this weekend at the Frontiers of Flight Museum.

2. Yesterday we press people were treated to a sneak peek of the Dallas Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, “Coastlines,” ..read more

There is no shortage of film watching options this weekend, what with the USA Film Festival kicking off tomorrow and Texas Frightmare Weekend bringing some horror flicks and filmmakers starting Friday. This may be the must-see, though: The Bengali Association of Dallas-Fort Worth’s Film Exposition, featuring three Indian made films: Cooking with Stella (Friday, Apr 30), Amu (Saturday, May 1), and Bombay Summer (Sunday, May 2). If you were following along closely, you would have noticed the Dallas International Film ..read more