CultureMap Dallas • October 23 2025

Where to drink in Dallas right now: 5 diverse happy hours for October

The busy — and expensive — holiday season is just around the corner, so do your finances a favor now and seek out a new favorite happy hour (or two).This edition of Where to Drink, our monthly roundup of the best bar specials, spotlights five Dallas-area restaurants and bars that encompass a wide range of experiences, but with all of them serving drinks and deals worth toasting.Here’s where to drink in Dallas this month:Columbian Country ClubPremier cocktail lounge on Ross Avenue is now making w...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • October 19 2025

Texas Studio: Ballet Artist Silas Farley Makes the Joyful Leap to Dallas

Silas Farley likes to joke that he’s the “ultimate ballet nerd.” He says it with warmth and a hint of reverence, as if confessing a lifelong devotion to a beloved friend. From the time he was seven years old, Farley immersed himself in the history and evolution of ballet, reading voraciously and studying old performances while most kids his age were still figuring out what they liked. That sense of calling has never left him. He has lived many lives inside the art form—dancer, teacher, choreogra...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • September 30 2025

Etched in Eternity: Mythical Torlonia Collection makes its historic debut at the Kimbell

In the Kimbell Art Museum’s Renzo Piano Pavilion, 58 ancient marble sculptures—some gods, others emperors, still others ordinary Romans—stand in commanding silence, carrying with them the weight of centuries.
“It’s difficult to overstate how rare this is,” says Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s senior curator of Asian, African, and ancient American art and curator of the exhibition. “Even if you traveled to Rome, you would not see this collection. It has been largely inaccessible for decades....

CultureMap Dallas • September 19 2025

16 Dallas restaurants face off in CultureMap's Top Taco Tournament

As part of this year’s Tailgate, CultureMap’s celebration of everyone’s favorite way to get in the game-day spirit, we’re asking readers to determine the best taco spot in Dallas in our Top Taco Tournament.Picking one best taco joint out of hundreds of qualified restaurants is virtually impossible. Instead, we’ve chosen 16 favorites across a few categories.The nominees are paired up, bracket-style, to compete against each other. Readers can vote for their favorite restaurant in each matchup. The...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • September 18 2025

Texas Studio: Amanda Reyes is Working through It Onstage

On a warm Texas night, the cicadas buzz in harmony with the actors at Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth. The wooden stage, tucked beneath a blanket of stars, feels more like a secret hideaway than a performance venue. It was here—surrounded by nature, magic, and community—that Amanda Reyes rediscovered her love for acting.
That sense of homecoming is something Reyes has been chasing her entire career. Born in Denton and raised in Lewisville (“home of the fighting farmers,” she laughs), Reyes grew...

Iconic Life magazine • September 16 2025

Santiago Oakes: A Luxury Orange County Ranch Home Blending Modern Design, Tradition, and Nature

At the heart of the remarkable Orange County residence known as Santiago Oakes lies something unexpected: a garage. But not just any garage — this “man cave,” built before the rest of the new home even existed, was so loved by the homeowners that it became the design touchstone for everything that followed. As principal architect Amat Tajudin of EBTA Architects explains, “The site already had a particular style started a few years ago: a barn that houses bedrooms, an automotive display, a bar...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • September 11 2025

Sharing the Same Rhythms: Cara Mía Theatre’s Latinidades Festival Returns to Dallas

This fall, Dallas once again becomes a crossroads of Latinx voices as Cara Mía Theatre launches its 2025–26 season with the sixth-annual Latinidades Festival & Symposium. Running Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, 2025 at the Latino Cultural Center, the festival has grown into the largest international Latino theater gathering in Dallas. As Cara Mía enters its 29th season, executive artistic director David Lozano frames the festival as a vehicle for expanding Dallas’ cultural imagination, rather than onl...

CultureMap Dallas • September 4 2025

Where to drink in Dallas right now: 5 sweet happy hours for September

Wallet feeling a little empty after all that back-to-school shopping? Happy hour to the rescue. This edition of Where to Drink, our monthly roundup of the best bar specials, is here to provide you with five spots where your drinking dollars stretch a little further, especially during that magic time known as happy hour.Here's where to drink in Dallas this month:At Fault Family-owned sports bar with indoor pickleball court has a serious food program overseen by chef John Franke (Sixty Vines, Whis...

CultureMap Houston • August 29 2025

Every bite and pour you’ll score at CultureMap's 2025 Houston Tailgate

Heads up, Houston sports lovers: The Tailgate is almost here. CultureMap’s signature sports celebration kicks off Thursday, September 11, at 8th Wonder in EaDo, and trust us, you’ll want to be part of the action.Not a die-hard football fan? No worries. Whether you’re into hockey, soccer, basketball, baseball — or just incredible food and drinks — this party’s for you.Every Tailgate ticket includes delicious bites from local restaurants, premium complimentary beverages, and plenty of fun activiti...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • August 13 2025

Forging Admiration: Art Worth encourages Fort Worth fans to see artists in their element

If you’ve ever wanted to watch molten glass stretch and curl into a goblet while an opera aria drifts through the autumn air, Fort Worth has just the weekend for you. The free Art Worth Festival, returning for its fourth year Oct. 24–26, transforms the lawn at The Shops at Clearfork into a vibrant crossroads where artistry in all its forms—paint, clay, wood, glass, metal, and music—comes to life.
Wander the festival and you might stumble upon a woodturner coaxing a silky curve from a chunk of ma...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • August 13 2025

Stage Left of Center: Four Texas Theaters Redefining Regional Performance

Texas is no stranger to theatrical prestige. Both Dallas Theater Center and Houston’s Alley Theatre have won the distinguished Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, but to understand the full scope of the state’s creative force, you have to look beyond the conventional.
Each one is shaping the cultural identity of its community by trusting their own artistic instincts, investing in homegrown talent, and inviting audiences to take a different kind of journey. For the adventurous theatergoe...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 22 2025

Dance with Abandon: Avant Chamber Ballet Grows a New Audience with Biggest Season Yet

Katie Puder isn’t one to do things halfway. For Avant Chamber Ballet’s 13th season, the founding artistic director is nearly doubling the company’s repertoire, launching a new subscription series for families, premiering two original ballets, and restaging a landmark production by mentor and longtime collaborator Paul Mejia. And all of it will be performed with live music, featuring full orchestras for five out of the eight productions.
The company’s largest season to date features two distinct...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 22 2025

Big Moves Ahead: Bruce Wood Dance Dallas Leans Into Legacy for 2025–26

Bruce Wood Dance Dallas is approaching its sweet sixteen with a season that blurs boundaries between genres, generations, and creative disciplines. Artistic director Joy Bollinger, who has led the company since 2018, calls it a season built on “connection and risk,” the kind of programming that welcomes both longtime supporters and new audiences into the fold.
The season opens Aug. 9-10 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater with Imagine, a first-time collaboration with Uptown Players that Bollinger ca...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 8 2025

The Ballad of Stage West: Fort Worth theater company’s 47th season is a matter of life and death

Stage West’s 47th season is full of wild turns: ghost machines, war-time ceasefires, financial despair, and a cottage crawling with infidelity. The six-play season is stacked with regional premieres and collaborations, all with the through-line of empathy.
The season begins with Ride the Cyclone (Oct. 16-Nov. 2, 2025), a musical about six teenagers who die in a freak roller coaster accident and find themselves in spiritual limbo, where a mechanical fortune teller gives them one last shot at life...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • July 8 2025

Glitter and Be Gay: Uptown Players celebrates chosen family, queer joy, resilience, and rebellion in 2025-26 season

The theater produced by Uptown Players has always pulsed with a particular kind of energy that’s equal parts heart, wit, and daring. That pulse beats loud and clear in the Dallas theater company’s 2025-26 season, which promises a rich mix of irreverent comedy, powerful drama, and musical mayhem, all housed in the historic Kalita Humphreys Theater (with a stop at Theatre Three for good measure). Never content to play it safe, Uptown Players—Dallas’ premier LGBTQ+ theater—leans even deeper into bo...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • June 2 2025

Unbind Your Imagination: TITAS/Dance Unbound invites global dance into Dallas for 2025-26 season

For TITAS/Dance Unbound’s 2025-26 season, the math is undeniably impressive: 10 companies from five different countries, among them two debuts (one U.S. and one Texas) and two world premieres.
Of equal importance is the idea of “be in the room.” TITAS developed this mantra following the pandemic to entice audiences back into the theater for shared experiences, and still asserts that nothing replaces the magic and connection of in-person performance. Santos’s tagline also generated ACTX’s March/A...

Arts and Culture Texas magazine • April 18 2025

Cartoon King: The Brilliant Accessibility of KAWS at Crystal Bridges (COVER STORY)

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...