ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION: The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is currently hosting “FOCUS: Gary Simmons.” The New York artist’s favored techniques is to create images through erasure; chalk and paint are most often used. So what’s that look like? “Up close, the texture of chalk on blackboard paint brims with nuance and human presence,” Cassandra Emswiler writes about Subtlety of a Train Wreck in her Front Row Review. “It’s invigorating to know that Simmons had to travel to Fort Worth to re-create this work, which was originally completed in 1998.” A picture of Subtlety of a Train is included in the review.

LOTS OF LIGHT: Hanging on the walls of Photos Do Not Bend are photographs by British photographer Michael Kenna. Like Gary Simmons, Kenna also has a signature technique – extremely long exposures. Sometimes he’ll leave the lens open for an hour or more. “Though other photographers deploy the same techniques, few achieve Kenna’s luxurious moodiness that reveals terrain that is known, felt — even loved — but, at its deepest level, mostly unseen,” Patricia Mora writes in her dallasnews.com review. Catch the show through Feb. 16.

A BIG GIFT: The Hamon Arts Library at SMU received some good news this week. The estate of Dallas arts patron Nancy Hamon has donated $1 million to help endow, preserve and exhibit the special collections housed in the library. On top of that, film historian and collector Jeff Gordon has announced a planned estate gift of movie archives valued at $1.5 million. You can get a sneak peek of the Gordon collection in the exhibition “Linda Darnell from Dallas to Hollywood: Selections from the Jeff Gordon Collection,” which is up through May 17.