While we don't advise you to visit the Austin Children's Museum by yourself, we encourage you to get your little brother or baby cousin and make way to the museum in time to catch Eric Archer's Electric Gong exhibit. ...

He’s a master of sampling and an early proponent of turntablism, but you won’t find Carl Stone working with Kanye any time soon. Instead, throughout his musical career, minimalist pioneer Stone has taken experimented with electronics and sound in a way that recalls his hero John Cage and other irrepressible avant-garde musicians of his ilk....

The week's news on arts, books, film and music....

The new Museum building will be developed in partnership with international developer Hines and world-class architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, whose portfolio includes the MoMA in Manhattan, the future World Financial Center in Beijing, and the Citigroup Tower in London....

A New York judge rules that sending a MySpace "friend request" to a person who has a restraining order against you is illegal. Cold War conspiracy! Russia believes America's announced plan to shoot down one of its broken spy satellites is, in reality, a test its of its anti-missile defense system's capability. At any rate, it looks like the satellite is going to crash to Earth pretty soon, so keep your head on a......

ImageAfter Art Article discusses the possibility that museums have begun to exceed their usefulness for appreciating art, due to overcrowding. Kind of a snobby article, but it raises interesting points. /// A museum in Cologne, Germany, discovers that one of its Monet paintings is a forgery. /// This Saturday, the Austin Museum of Art will host its "Artists Boot Camp" series for the city's emerging artists. Books Border's bookstore goes digital - and how! ///......

Police on the lookout for Adrian Jaimes and his three abductors; his older sister recognized one of the abductors as someone who had harassed her and her brother in January on their way home from school. Sorry, Texas GOP Primary voters planning to vote for Romney! He's dropped out so that his campaign won't help the terrorists win. Or something like that. A lot of Texas GOP voters not happy about having to vote for McCain....

Tonight’s art party marks the opening of the new exhibit, The Virgin, Saints, and Angels, which is probably not your regular crowd to hang out with on a Friday evening. ...

Austin Modernists Past and Present will present the works of two influential Austin modern artists, Shawn Camp and Ralph White, hanging inside a newly built modern home that boasts gallery-like entertaining spaces and spectacular views of the Austin skyline from a rooftop terrace....

Photos of The Electric Gong display, part of the Play it by Ear exhibit, at the Austin Children's Museum on January 18, 2008. Photos courtesy of Steve Hopson. If you can't view the Flash slideshow above, an alternate version appears after the jump.......

Artists, take note: When in doubt about how to price your work, go high. ...

The Blanton Museum's B Scene events happen once a month and celebrate the arts by combining music, drinks and socializing to rejuvenate the sometimes stuffy fine art scene. Their unique approach to reaching out to the public this way includes showcasing local musicians and DJs, and each B Scene event offers a different genre representation from Austin's diverse musical culture. ...

From ImageAfterArt The Teresa Long Center for the Performing Arts (formerly the Palmer Auditorium) will be opening with a bang in early March 2008. Enter: "The Earth Harp," a gargantuan outdoor stringed instrument created by these guys. /// Art thieves strike in Brazil! They robbed the Sao Paolo Museum of Art (MASP), making off with two paintings worth a total of approximately $100 million dollars. The paintings: Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (Picasso) and The Coffee......

No. 5 Jose Gonzalez - "Time to Send Someone Away" from Retread Sessions on Vimeo. If you missed Jose Gonzalez at the Parish last week, you missed one of the most intimate, gorgeously performed sets in a long while. All is not lost, though! KUT 90.5 FM's video series called Retread Sessions spent some time with Gonzalez in the America/Americas gallery at the Blanton Museum on campus, and filmed two songs in the process.......

Photo of the Walls Unit gurney from Britannica Student Encyclopedia 25 Years of Lethal Injection: What Have We Learned?Friday, December 7Texas Prison Museum (map) This Friday marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first execution by lethal injection in the United States. Naturally, Texas, along with the city of Huntsville -- sometimes referred to as the "execution capital of the world"-- took this honor. With executions effectively on hold in Texas while the U.S. Supreme Court......

Photo from ImageAfter Starting today, we'll be publishing a weekly roundup of various arts & entertainment news that we've come across. Most of these developments, whether national or international, have a direct relationship with something local, whether it be an organization, individual, or our collective culture. In any case, it's a nice chance to broaden our world view -- a definite bonus (or necessity, some might argue) for a city that revels in creativity! --......

When Joseph Campbell said, "Follow your bliss," what artist Jason Hackenwerth heard was, "If you love blowing balloons, git up on it." And so he did. Today, Hackenwerth's latex balloon sculptures are highly sought after; they exude an organic, 20,000 Leagues kind of invertebrate charm. Several colorful, oxygen-plumped specimens will be on display at The Blanton Museum, "...until [the pieces] run out of air." That will likely be around mid-November, unless an evil-doing darts player......

Highlights for this week: The Royal Family bids adieu to the east side with a giant Halloween bash, featuring DJ sets by Stay Gold, a costume contest, and a whopping 75% off the entire store inventory The Blanton Museum of Art opens up afterhours on Friday for its monthly B scene, with art from the American West and music by the Unfortunate Heads and DJ Spooky Texas Fun Fun Fun Fest takes over Waterloo Park......

Last New Year’s Eve, experimental film artist Luke Savisky gave us the eye. This Halloween season, he'll create a surreal urban oasis on film at one of Austin’s historic parks. It may be hard to top images of a giant eyeball projected on to a downtown water tower, but Savisky’s latest large-scale film installation promises to be just as imaginative—and maybe just a little less creepy. On Friday night, Savisky will present Film Actions VI:......

Okay--so there are a bunch cool things happening at the Austin Film Festival tonight, and a we wanted to let you know about a few last-minute tidbits and screening changes. *The Rebel is now playing at 9:45pm at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, NOT at the 9:30 Paramount slot we'd previously told you about. *The awesome narrative feature and 2007 AFF "Film Jury Narrative Feature Winner" Shotgun Stories is now playing at 9:45pm......

Hey, thanks Austin! We're thrilled that you chose us as your 2007 Best of Austin pick for Local "Fun" Web Site. Needless to say, it's a tremendous honor to be recognized two years in a row (last year, we tied with the Chronicle itself for Best Local Entertainment Web Site). We solemnly swear that we'll continue to entertain and, on those lucky occasions, enlighten you with the best in Austin culture and news. And, to......

Moth!Fight! are a band who have had a much longer gestation period than most of their peers, a time in which one can assume songwriter and “conductor” Kevin Adickes painstakingly perfecting both the rumpled antique aesthetics that dominate his band’s look, performances and sound – the latter of which calls to mind both the inspired trippy noise-pop of The Olivia Tremor Control, but which also speaks in the lexicon of the band’s clear, more current......

“Then wolves will live in peace with lambs. And leopards will lie down to rest with goats. Calves, lions and young bulls will eat together. And Reverends will profess their love for leather culture.” The above spin on a few verses from the Book of Isaiah pretty much sums up the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival’s stellar opening festivities. As expected, there was a strong sense of community that only increased throughout the......

The Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) is bringing back its monthly Digital Showcase tomorrow night at Club DeVille, and, as usual, they've managed to assemble an impressive roster of electronic musicians and visual artists. Saturday's headliner is New York City's DJ /rupture, aka Jace Clayton. A gifted musician and producer, Rupture has enjoyed a prolific career that's run the gamut from releasing mix albums and performing with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (as a turntable......

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Austin Fire Department, which was started on Sept. 25, 1857 by ex-New York fireman and Austin grocer John Bremond Sr.* John Bremond Sr.What began as the volunteer-based Hook and Ladder Fire Company No. 1—operating under the motto of "Always Ready!"—eventually blossomed into one of the largest departments in the country. AFD now employes over 1,000 people, with 44 fire stations throughout the city. To......

Tribeza's Fashion Show was the ultimate mixer, attracting well over 300 people last Friday night at the Blanton Museum. During the hour leading up to the show, crafty DIY designers chatted up boutique owners and journalists in the VIP section, while impossibly slim women, wearing everything from vintage hats to shorts and sandals, sipped cocktails under the museum terrace. We arrived early to sample complimentary hors d'oeurves of the raw-fish variety, prepared by Truluck's, Starlite,......

Today is National (Park)ing Day, where groups from all around the country get together to create temporary art and beautification projects in metered public parking spots. "National Park(ing) Day is an opportunity to reclaim public parking spaces for parks and open spaces - places for people to enjoy," say event organizers at the Trust for Public Land. "The quality of our daily experience is only enhanced by often neglected necessities like parks, playgrounds, and gardens......

Strapped for cash after blowing the budget on $6 beers and pedicab rides last weekend? Or maybe you're just ready for a little air-conditioned peace and quiet after rubbing sweat with 65,000 other music lovers. Either way, on Sunday you can spend zero dollars and enjoy a break from live music by taking advantage of the 10th Annual Austin Museum Day. The event's 30 participating sites will incorporate a mix of art, history and......

You bring up the idea of “art”, and you’re definitely begging for some heated shit talking. Opinions are the first to fly, then potentially followed by epithets, then perhaps some brass knuckles. All metaphoric in form, of course. Why must these disagreements come to pass? Notorious MSG comes to mind. It could be said that this is exactly what art and artists, as functional cogs in the machines of social industry, are supposed to......

An ominous black piñata shaped like a B-2 bomber greets visitors walking through the doors at Arthouse in downtown Austin. Around the corner stands a John Deere tractor made entirely of clay; a string of Japanese fireworks dangle from the ceiling. Five of the state’s most under-recognized artists are featured in the new Arthouse Texas Prize exhibit, which marries unexpected beauty with mind-bending artistic statements. The exhibit was designed to celebrate the broad spectrum of......