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1 week ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
“This empire eats his own children and calls it freedom.”That’s one of the writing prompts artist Gregg Deal has written in his poetry journal. On Tuesday night, he performed a 20-minute set of poetry at Amphibian Stage as part of the 10-day annual festival SparkFest. This is the fifth SparkFest, which offers visual art, theater, poetry and dance that center on a different marginalized community. One year the festival focused on communities from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
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1 week ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
On Christmas Day in 1974, 5-year-old Michelle Miller Burns received her first Nancy Drew book, The Thirteenth Pearl, from her parents. Decades later, Burns is still collecting Nancy Drew books, which she says inspired her journey from when she was a young violinist to now leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as president and CEO. In many ways, Burns saw herself in Nancy Drew. “She was courageous and curious. She was smart, she was adventuresome.
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3 weeks ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
Texas Ballet Theater has reached its first collective bargaining agreement with the American Guild of Musical Artists, marking the first time a North Texas dance company has reached a union contract in over 40 years. Griff Braun, national organizing director of AGMA, said “this is an important step for dance and for union artists in the North Texas area.”TBT dancers formed a union in 2023 and have been bargaining with the company for almost two years.
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3 weeks ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
Dallas Children’s Theater is laying off four employees, cutting two shows from its upcoming season and will pause its academy classes after this summer.
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4 weeks ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
The National Endowment for the Arts has cut over $345,000 in funding from North Texas arts groups in recent weeks, but there may be a glimmer of hope. As the Texas Legislature’s most recent session comes to a close, state lawmakers are expected to raise the Texas Commission on the Arts’ budget for the next two years by about $5.7 million, bringing funding from the state to a total of about $39.8 million for the 2026-27 biennium.
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1 month ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
On May 2, Jennifer Benoit-Bryan opened a distressing email. “The National Endowment for the Arts will no longer offer award funding for the project … ”Benoit-Bryan, director at Southern Methodist University DataArts, said the research center for the arts will now need to put the AI project on hold indefinitely. The project focuses on using AI to improve decision-making for arts funding.
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1 month ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
Since opening in 2021, Daisha Board Gallery has championed artists from marginalized communities. Now, after almost two years in the artistic hub of the Tin District in West Dallas, the gallery is moving to a smaller space in Oak Cliff. The downsizing is an effort to navigate an increasingly turbulent arts ecosystem. Recently, federal funding cuts and a decline in arts spending have further strained arts groups’ budgets.
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1 month ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
The numbers in this story reflect funding loss as of May 8, 2025 and are likely to change. Plans to transform a former KKK auditorium into a community center. Sensory-friendly dance performances. A play focused on Harriet Tubman. These are a few of the local projects that lost support from the National Endowment for the Arts over the past week. Local arts organizations are facing a deficit of more than $280,000 after the NEA abruptly pulled funding nationwide last Friday.
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1 month ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
This is part of an Arts Access series called “Home is where the art is,” which gives an inside look into the art that North Texans treasure in their homes. In the backyard of Paul Longoria’s Oak Cliff home, sparkling lowriders glide past a barber shop and taco joint before hopping along a parking lot. There’s even a gas station, police cars and palm trees with the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the distance. How is this possible?
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1 month ago | 
keranews.org | Elizabeth Myong |Arts Access
This is part of an Arts Access series called “Home is where the art is,” which gives an inside look into the art that North Texans treasure in their homes. Inside Voke Onoriose’s home studio for personal styling, an ornate vintage mirror sits on a corner table. “Me vs. Me.”Onoriose wrote that phrase on her mirror in black marker. It’s a reminder to focus on her own journey as a personal stylist. “It's just a reminder to not look at outwardly things. You know, just look within yourself.
