A black-box storage building in East Austin is hiding a new contemporary art museum, opening Saturday with free admission. Its first show borrows its title from a Glenn Ligon painting rooted in James Baldwin, and the space will also host the Eastside Kings Festival.
— via KUT, Caroline McConnico
A former power-plant pump house turns into a projection screen for 23 artists this month, with a rower's years on Lady Bird Lake and a Houston duo's paper boats scaled up into monuments. Seaholm's windows and concrete divisions aren't a blank canvas, they dictate where the images can even go.
— via Austin Chronicle, Maryam Muliaee
A rural New York sheriff has one deputy, a dead husband, no coffee, and cows going missing while corpses won't stay buried. The Adams Family's latest turns cryptid horror into deadpan small-town comedy, premiering at Fantastic Fest.
— via Austin Chronicle, Richard Whittaker
A local horror short raised nearly $14,000 in crowdfunding, landed a $5,000 city grant, and is now premiering at Fantastic Fest. The filmmaker behind it says Austin's DIY scene made it possible.
— via KUT, Eric Webb
In Austin, a gummy's own label can now send someone to jail. Since Texas revived its Delta-8 ban July 31, police say packaging alone can justify a felony arrest, while the sugar and gelatin used to make the product could push sentences as high as life.
— via KUT, Nathan Bernier
UT Austin is cutting four majors, including African diaspora and Mexican American studies, after rejecting faculty's plan to keep them. The university says current students can finish their degrees, but professors say course offerings and even next semester are already in question.
— via KUT, Greta Díaz González Vázquez
A San Marcos council member faces a third degree felony after allegedly pushing one Austin security officer and biting another's hand during a Sunday arrest. He posted $5,000 bail and showed up to Tuesday's council meeting without saying a word about it.
— via KUT, Leigh Walden
A new "anti-capitalistic, tragicomic child labor heist play" is rolling out at multiple theaters over 18 months, with playwright Mary Glen Fredrick working directly in the rehearsal room at each stop. The VORTEX's artistic director says it's a rare chance to shape a show alongside its writer instead of studying dead ones.
— via KUT, Michael Lee
A misread license plate got her roommate pulled over. Now Lydia Fortuna is part of a growing "DeFlock" coalition working to strip AI-powered surveillance cameras from Texas streets, city by city, after Austin already cut ties with Flock Safety.
— via KUT, Gabriel Velasquez Neira
Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor and head of the National Urban League, talks with In Black America about the State of Black America report, a benchmark on racial inequality first published in 1976. He details what this year's edition finds across economics, employment, education, health, housing and criminal justice.
— via KUT, John L. Hanson Jr.
Five straight F ratings have put Burnet and Webb Middle Schools on the brink of a state takeover, and parents now have until Oct. 15 to petition for their closure instead. Austin ISD says it won't help gather signatures, leaving families to decide alone whether that's a better fate than a state-appointed board.
— via KUT, Greta Díaz González Vázquez
Police, prosecutors and even the state health department can't agree whether smokable hemp is legal to possess in Texas, thanks to a compound that turns into marijuana's high only when lit. Austin says it's fine; Round Rock says it's a felony; one sheriff's office just leaves it to the deputy.
— via KUT, Nathan Bernier
Airbnb is putting $6.4 million into Austin's St. Johns redevelopment, the first city to tap the company's new $250 million "last-dollar financing" program. The 19-acre project will include more than 500 housing units, and city officials say Airbnb gets no incentives in return.
— via KUT, Luz Moreno-Lozano
The Supreme Court sided 7-2 against Trump's new mail-in voting rules, keeping them off the books before the midterms. Travis County had already spent more than $21,000 on ballot envelopes the rules would have made obsolete.
— via KUT, Katy McAfee
UT's Moody College has a new dean: former Walden Media CEO Cary Granat, starting Sept. 28. He inherits a mess: KUT's next general manager pick, after the station's old GM was fired following a fight with the university over canceled festival programming.
— via KUT, Andrew Weber
A pandemic lockdown turned into a gore-soaked barbarian puppet epic shot entirely in a garage in Belleville, Ontario. No felt, no yarn: heads are liquid latex, bodies carved foam, and the whole cast learned puppeteering scene by scene as cameras rolled.
— via Austin Chronicle, Richard Whittaker
ATX Trans Pride is ditching August's record 107-degree heat for a full weekend in September, expanding into five venues and every role from bouncers to bartenders staffed by trans people. Founder Edward West says the bigger footprint is a direct answer to Austin losing its rainbow crosswalks.
— via Austin Chronicle, Charlie Sharpe
Home prices and sales declined across the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area in August, but new data from regional real estate listing service Unlock MLS shows that buyer activity varied…
— via CultureMap Austin, KVUE Staff
A Robstown, Texas, farm is giving a larger-than-life salute to Dolly Parton. Rockin’ K Farms, near Corpus Christi, has built a massive corn maze in tribute to the country music…
— via CultureMap Austin, Brandon Watson
Before the rest of September flies on by and you suddenly find yourself in the throes of ACL Fest, get out for a local show or two. See here for…
— via CultureMap Austin, John Laird