Guest blogger Cindy Schwartz is the founder of Cynthia C. Schwartz Fine Art and the president of the Dallas Architecture Forum.

Once again, the Dallas Architecture Forum will bring to Dallas the most distinguished, outside-of-the-box-thinkers for their second annual Design Symposium.  The fact that the speakers are all pals makes the prospect of animated conversation even more likely. It certainly makes you want to cozy up to your morning coffee and eaves drop on the dialogue between Aaron Betsky, Scott Johnson, Jorge Pardo, George Sexton and Jack Lane.  This is the stellar line-up for this year’s symposium, which will ponder the question: “How do you design for a collection?”

This is the dream panel. Each speaker will have the opportunity to share his own experience with this imposing question, and there will also  be time for the entire group to be in dialogue.  What that means is, the audience will have the unique chance to hear from the different and potentially opposing perspectives of a practicing artist, architect, lighting designer, architecture critic and museum director.

These are the very best and most experienced in their fields.  Aaron Betsky was the director of the Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2008 and is the former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the world’s largest architecture museum.  Scott Johnson, who designed the MGM Tower, is the architect for Museum Tower in Dallas.  Jorge Pardo is a practicing artist who recently created the re-installation design for the Pre-Columbian Galleries at the LA County Museum. George Sexton is a lighting designer whose commercial projects include most major museums in this country. Jack Lane, our former Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, will serve as the moderator of the panel.

You can count on the conversation to be lively.

The symposium will take place Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Magnolia Theatre in Dallas. For more information and to register online, go to the Dallas Architecture Forum Web site.