Totally Texas -- Blazing weekend in Dallas Arts District

Good times are always free in the Dallas Arts District the first Saturday of each month, with Target First Saturdays at the Nasher Sculpture Center and Adventure Asia family programs at the Crow Collection of Asian Art across the street.

This Saturday, February 1, is even more special because New Year’s Day welcomes the Chinese Year of the Horse, with more than 10,000 visitors expected for a day-long celebration.

The Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora Street, opens an hour early at 10 a.m. on first Saturdays. This month’s theme for kid-friendly activities is “Exploration”, and the opening children’s art activity is “special delivery boxes,” 10 a.m. to noon. Or take a family tour of art collection indoors and out at 10:15, 11:15 and 12:15; stretch and relax with yoga in the garden at 11:30 a.m.; or explore current events through poetry and flash fiction with the Dallas Writer’s Garret, noon to 1 p.m.

Grab a kid’s meal at the Nasher Café from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. or belly up to the Asian-themed food trucks parked nearby for the Chinese New Year celebrations.

Official children’s activities wrap up by 2 p.m., but free admission continues until 5 p.m. You don’t even have to be accompanied by a child to enter. For a complete schedule of Target First Saturday events, see www.nashersculpturecenter.org/.

At the Crow Collection, across the street at 2010 Flora, events overflow onto the street for the New Year’s celebration, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On the main stage across adjacent Olive Street, there’s music and dance, Chinese lions and a kung fu display. In keeping with the Year of the Horse theme, cowboys and cowgirls compete in costume contests, and everything ends with a bang of fireworks at 6:15 p.m.

Around the museum, get your face painted or your fortune told, or pet some of the visiting miniature horses (parental supervision needed for children). Inside, make horse puppets, practice calligraphy, join local writers for literary activities, and more. For a complete schedule see
http://crowcollection.org/.

Events at both the Nasher and Crow are free, but you’re on your own for food, drinks and shopping at the street side merchandise booths.

Need more to do? Admission to the adjacent Dallas Museum of Art is always free, but on Saturdays you can also take docent-led tours at 2 p.m. or create your own abstract painting in the art studio from 1 -2:30 p.m.

There is parking in lots and at meters all around the Arts District, but given the crowds, this would be a great time to take DART into downtown and pack yourself and kids aboard one of the pink D-Link buses shuttling around downtown. See “In the pink with Dallas D-Link,” January 24, 2014, at this site for more on the free shuttle buses. Or map your trip at www.dart/dlink/dlink.asp/.

Totally Texas -- Dragons & other monsters

For those of you, like me, who were surprised to find the Chinese New Year coming so early, here’s the rule for this combination of lunar and solar calendars. Oversimplifying a bit, the Chinese New Year falls on the second new moon following the winter solstice. This enables me to tell my daughter, born on January 19, that she is under the sign of what appears to be the previous year, not the Western calendar year of her birth.

This year, that beginning date is today, January 23. Happy New Year!

This year is under the sign of the dragon (one of the twelve animals of Chinese astrology). My twin grandsons (year of the dog) don’t care how it’s determined. They just think dragons are cool!

(And for something really cool, see the water dragon image writer/artist Heidi Berthiaume created for the year 2012 at the bottom of this page.  Since I was born in a water dragon year, I told her I had to have it, and she graciously consented.)

If you didn’t get enough festivities this past weekend for the beginning of the dragon year, the Trammel and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art offers a reprise the first Saturday in February, February 4, during its AdventureAsia: Family Days at the Crow programs. Free events run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2010 Flora St., Dallas, 75210-2335.

The Crow Collection’s ongoing exhibits are always free. The museum is closed Mondays but open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and from 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. Thursdays. For a complete list of exhibits and activities, see www.crowcollection.org/

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Can’t wait another day for big scary monsters? Try Planet Shark: Predator or Prey? at the Museum of Nature and Science, 1318 South Second Avenue, in Dallas’s Fair Park. The exhibit, running through September 16, is open Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Several galleries include exhibits of shark evolution and biology, including fossil jaws and teeth like those in the picture accompanying this post.

One gallery (situated to the side) includes news footage of shark attacks and their aftermath, including exhibits related to the blockbuster movie Jaws. A sign warns it may
be too graphic for young children. I found the information fascinating, but it’s not stuff I’d take my not quite six-year-old grandsons through.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum’s IMAX theater currently shows the movie Sharks, with marine biologist Jean-Michel Cousteau, and Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World. Both movies run through May 25.

I was relieved to learn that, due to the length of the movies, the museum is not showing the TI signature film featuring time lapse photography of the Dallas skyline with them. Some may grieve, but time lapse and heights give me vertigo. Visit
www.natureandscience.org/ for ticket prices, show times, and other museum events.

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For my final monster suggestion, the Heard Natural Science Museum in McKinney continues its Dinosaurs Live! outdoor exhibit of life-size, animatronic dinosaurs through Sunday, January 29. The robotic dinosaurs move, roar, and in one case, spit water on unwary bystanders. My grandsons, not quite six, have seen and loved the exhibit in past years, but still find the roaring T. rex intimidating. See www.heardmuseum.org/ for times and ticket prices.

Totally Texas -- An Asian oasis in the heart of Dallas

The Crow Collection of Asian Art

2010 Flora St., Dallas

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I got hooked on the Crow Collection several years ago when the federal agency I worked for held training sessions on the east end of downtown Dallas. I’d pack a brown bag and spend the too-short lunch breaks exploring the riches at the Crow. It was close. It was cool. And the price was right for a government employee -- free.

My grandsons got hooked by the glassed-in sky bridge joining galleries when they spied a dragon puppet there one Chinese New Year. Chinese dragons, they decided, were especially cool because they had beards.

The sky bridge currently houses an exhibition of origami cranes -- the fruits of the Crow Collection’s “1000 Cranes, 1000 Years of Happiness” competition. The competition’s winner was Rebekah Rutledge, with a truly amazing contribution of 7,000 birds folded from paper. The site www.crowcollection.org/1000cranechallenge.aspx/ includes a romantic picture with the glittering birds, but I like the one with little boys that illustrates this post. (Please note that the Crow, like any museum, places limits on photography.)

With summer temperatures in much of Texas hovering around what meteorologists optimistically call “the low one hundreds,” strolling the galleries is a good way to get your daily quota of exercise for body, mind and spirit. The Crow Collection responds with several special exhibitions. Its first floor showcases “Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond” through September 11 and “Motion Pictures: A Handful of Drawings by Katsushika Hokusai” through August 28.

From Friday, August 19 through Friday, August 26, Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery construct a Tantric Buddhist mandala sand painting using millions of grains of crushed marble to generate energies for global healing.

When my family last visited, “Dream Chamber: Chinese Bedroom Furniture from the 17^th through 19^th Century” and “Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: East Asia” were being installed. For more information on upcoming exhibits, see www.crowcollection.org/current_exhibitions.aspx/

Like any good art museum, the Crow has a luscious selection of gifts in its aptly named Lotus Shop. The boys had to be dragged away. Obviously, they inherited my daughter’s shopping gene. The Crow is open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Fridays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It’s closed on Mondays. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

(Next month: Totally Texas goes watery, beginning with Austin’s perpetually-cool Barton Springs Pool)