ASSESSING THE ARTS DISTRICT: Yesterday, we pointed you to this story in The Dallas Morning News about all the media coverage coming the Arts Districts’ way. But we never said all that coverage was going to be positive. Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic Christopher Hawthorne doesn’t have major problems with either of the new buildings. But he does see a lack of cohesiveness to the district as a whole, citing the Winspear as the new big kid on in town. “To an extent this sort of individuality is unavoidable. What board of trustees wants its new opera house to match the museum down the block,” he writes in his review.  “Still, the phenomenon has grown more attenuated and more extreme now, in the waning light of the starchitecture era. Cultural buildings by Koolhaas, Foster and their leading competitors can be as stunning and as aloof as runway models, looking at their neighbors in ways both haughty and wary.”

NEW HIRES: Michael Corris has been named chair of the Meadows division of art at SMU. Corris is an artist, curator and writer and holds two professorships in England. Read more about that appointment here. … Meanwhile, Dallas Chamber Music has named Candace Bawcombe its artistic director. She is a pianist, organist, harpsichordist and music administrator who has performed around the world. She replaces founding artistic director Dorothea Kelley, who died last month at 103.

CHEAP TICKETS: Live Nation is offering a two-for-one deal on tickets to a slew of shows at the House of Blues. Tickets for Buddy Guy, the Tragically Hip, Robert Randolph & the Family Band and more than a dozen others are included in the deal, which is available today only. Click here for the full lineup and to buy tickets.