RAISE THE CURTAIN: When you take your seat in the soon-to-be-complete Winspear Opera House, you’re going to be greeted by a pretty stunning work of art before the performers even take the stage. Artist Guillermo Kuitca has worked on everything from collage to set design, and now he can add “curtain designer” to his resume. The New York Times talked to the Argentine artist about the process of designing the permanent curtain for the Margaret McDermott Performance Hall in a story over the weekend. If the photo of the curtain that ran with the writeup has you interested in his other work, you can see more of it starting Thursday when the Dallas Museum of Art opens its Performance/Art show. In a side note: Be sure to check out the Dallas Morning News story from the weekend about a quartet of women who were instrumental in raising the money to build the two new performance spaces.

THE BEST OUT WEST: Late last month, the Dallas Observer offered up its annual Best Of Dallas issue, including a special section on arts and culture. Now, Fort Worth Weekly has weighed in on the best of Cowtown’s scene. It’s interesting to thumb through the selections to see where the readers and critics disagree, which is most of the time. You’d be smart to bookmark the links to both of these issues. Ya never know when you might need a quick suggestion in one of these fields.

ACL IN REVIEW: Didn’t make it down to Austin this year for the Austin City Limits festival? You’ll certainly be drier for it, as rain wrecked havoc on the event. Locally, DC9 at Night and quickdfw.com kept us informed about all of the North Texas acts who performed, including lots of great photos. Special props to Denton’s Sarah Jaffe, who was singled out by none other than Rolling Stone for her, “set of gentle, slowly building country songs marked by a sense of determination.” And an extra helping of thank yous goes to Preston Jones, for pointing out on his dfw.com music blog that you could watch a live-ish stream from Austin on Hulu. Thanks to that, I was able to watch the Dead Weather from home, making me feel not quite as bummed that I’m not going to be able to make their House of Blues show tonight.