AMON CARTER GETS EARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN PAINTING.  Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum announced it’s acquired The Caves, above, painted in 1869 by landscape artist Robert Seldon Duncanson, the first African-American painter to achieve international acclaim. [Sorry, that’s a cropped version above — it’s a VERY tall painting.] It was originally owned by a Cincinnati abolitionist Richard Sutton Rust and remained in his family until the Amon Carter purchased it. The painting will go on view to the public — for the first time — May 4.

ATTEND THE NATIONAL THEATER CONFERENCE FOR FREE.  Remember the national theater conference coming to Texas for the first time? It’s the Theater Communications Group convention in Dallas June 6-9 — with more than 1,200 theater professionals coming here. Yesterday TCG announced there are ways to attend it  for free. Theater companies and artists can volunteer, they can become TCG members for free for a year, they can apply for ‘subsidized conference paticipation,’ i.e., scholarships.

Thanks to the generosity of so many theater lovers and donors in Dallas, there are now affordable pathways for every member of our theater community to attend and TCG has raised generous funding from Dallas area sponsors to subsidize local participation in the national conference by both our local theaters and our independent theater artists. Scholarships applications are now available at the TCG website at www.tcg.org/conference. 

MORE METAL MEN!! (AND A WOMAN AND KIDS. PLUS A DOG.) Maybe you recall our Think TV interview four years ago (Giant Metal Men Invade Deep Ellum!!) with Brad Oldham and Brandon Oldenburg. No? Well, they’re the dudes responsible for the giant, shiny sculptural installation known as Walking Tall, the trio of happy robot figures (with accompanying birds) populating DART’s Green Line station in Deep Ellum, and surely you’ve seen them. Well, now, Brad and wife Christy Coltrin have created a whole (shorter) sibling family. And they have a video following the family outing to visit Walking Tall before the clan moved into their new home in the Lumen Hotel, across from SMU (hat tip: Mixmaster).