SUCCESSFULLY BORING NORTH TEXANS FOR YEARS! In D magazine, Front Row editor Peter Simek asks the question that has long bewildered and depressed  local arts lovers: For a city that has embraced some truly adventuresome architecture, why is much of Dallas’ public art so dull? Better still, online at Front Row, Simek suggests practical changes in the city’s public arts policies — most intriguingly, he suggests pooling the Percent for Art ordinance money so it could finance more substantial works instead of smaller, more individual, project-oriented, site-specific losers.

FLUXUS FLEXING ITS MUSCLES: You may recall our profile of Cecil Touchon, the Fort Worth collage artist who runs several dementedly inventive art museums out of his house and who has been creating Fluxus exhibitions for several years. Fluxus is junk with a sense of humor; a ’60s-era style of art that’s like a playful, low-rent form of Dada. Now, the NYTimes reviews a major show, “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life,” at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. By the way, Fluxfest Texas was earlier this year, while Touchon’s Fluxhibition #5 (“Fifty Years of Fluxing Around“), is, I believe, still accepting submitted works.

WE LOVES YOU PORGY. YOU, TOO, JEAN PAUL – In contrast to some of the lukewarm reviews that greeted The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess — the new Broadway-bound revival which features former Dallas performer Cedric Neal — Hilton Als has written an impassioned defense in The New Yorker. While you’re there, you can check out Susan Orlean’s profile of Jean-Paul Gaultier whose kinky-fancy duds are headed to the Dallas Museum of Art soon. The exhibition’s extravagant reception in Montreal leads to the question often heard around town: When do we get our city-wide Jean Paul parade — the one with the giant balloon cone bra?

ON THE WEST SIDE: Country star Randy Travis, 52, collapsed during the Crystal Heart Gala fundraiser at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in downtown Fort Worth Saturday night. He was not taken to the hospital and his manager says he’s fine … A commissioned Ed Ruscha photograph of a keyboard will be the signature image for the 14th Van Cliburn Competition in 2013, the Star-Telegram reports. The Oklahoma-born-painter-turned-LA pop art master had a major exhibition earlier this year at the Modern in Fort Worth.