MULTI-TALENTED AT THE MODERN: Most of us would be happy to excel at just one artistic pursuit. But if you don’t feel you’re very good at anything, blame Ben Jones – he seems to be hogging all the talent. Jones is a painter, animator, sculptor, performer and subject of a Focus show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. But don’t think all that ability has gone to his head. Part of his show is a series of ladders, and his show is in view of the ladder at the Modern – Martin Puryear’s Ladder for Booker T. Washington. “I didn’t want to go up against a master,” he tells dfw.com. “Had I known, I wouldn’t have brought my ladders.”

BILL WALKER, 1931-2010: Bill Walker of Fort Worth, who performed more than 300 shows with the Metropolitan Opera in New York before becoming director of the Fort Worth Opera, died on Saturday at his home in Fort Worth. “He basically rescued the opera company,” Whit Smith, a former president and chairman of the opera board, tells the Star-Telegram. When he wasn’t busy singing, he was busy chatting up Johnny Carson, who invited him on The Tonight Show a whopping 60 times.

ART IN PRINT: Elizabeth Kostova’s novel The Swan Thieves focuses on a painter who is institutionalized after he physically attacks a painting in The National Gallery of Art. A psychiatrist, who is also the book’s narrator, is brought in to figure out why. Kostova talks with dallasnews.com about how she loved art even before writing ahead of her Arts & Letter Live appearance on Friday.