Arts & Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art

19th season 2010 A celebration of the literary and performing arts featuring acclaimed authors, actors, illustrators, musicians, and more

for your information In 2010 Arts & Letters Live marks its 19th season, and we have made some changes that we hope will make your life easier.

• • •

Our season programs are listed chronologically for your convenience.

Pre-order an author’s new book when you purchase tickets, for pick up at Will Call.

Help us go green and save paper by placing your order online or by phone.

Become a Subscriber and Save on Ticket Prices!

Exciting new subscriber benefits include • • • •

The opportunity to build your own custom subscriptions with 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, or 17 events and save from $4 to $68 on your entire order.

Ticket exchange privileges Volume discounts Advance booking privileges

Purchase Tickets and Subscriptions • • •

Online (tickets only): www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org By phone (tickets and subscriptions): 214-922-1818 By mail (tickets and subscriptions): For a printable order form, visit DallasMuseumofArt.org/Tickets

Ticket Pricing • • •

Full: General public Reduced: DMA members, educators, librarians, seniors 65+, Friends of the Dallas Public Library Student

Museum members enjoy great discounts on tickets and subscriptions.

To become a member, visit DallasMuseumofArt.org/JoinRenew. Memberships start as low as $75.

Become an Arts & Letters Live Annual Series Supporter and receive discounts in the Museum Store, reserved seating, and invitations to private receptions and dinners with authors. See page 29 for information on our different Supporter levels and benefits.

For information on venues, parking, where to eat, services for the hearing impaired, and the Museum Store, visit DallasMuseumofArt.org.

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fresh ink

literary death match friday, january 15, 7:00 p.m. horchow auditorium Opium magazine’s Literary Death Match was cocreated in 2007 by Todd Zuniga (tonight’s host); it marries the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, the rapier-witted quips of American Idol (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare.

This competitive, humor-centric event features a thrilling mix of four authors who perform their most electric writing (in eight minutes or less) before a live audience and a panel of three celebrity judges. After each pair of readings, the judges take turns spouting hilarious, off-the-wall commentary about each story and then select their favorite to advance to the finals.

Two finalists compete in the finale, which trades in literary sensibility for an absurd and comical climax to determine who takes home the Literary Death Match crown.

Join us for a Texas-style smackdown with an über-talented trio of judges: Ben Fountain Author, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (Dallas) Tina Parker Co-Artistic and Administrative Director, Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas) Owen Egerton Author, How to Best Avoid Dying (Austin) The stellar literary lineup features Will Clarke Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, The Worthy (Dallas) Katherine Center The Bright Side of Disaster, Everyone Is Beautiful (Houston) Amelia Gray AM/PM (Austin) William Razavi Turban Cowboy (San Antonio)

Tickets to Fresh Ink programs are included with paid admission to the Museum.

Order tickets in advance to guarantee your seat.

DMA Members: FREE Adults: $10 Seniors 65+/Military: $7 Students: $5 Children Under 12: FREE Register online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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artful musings

david wroblewski thursday, january 21, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium David Wroblewski burst onto the literary scene last summer with his debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It became a New York Times bestseller and was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. Stephen King raves, “I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. . . .

It’s a novel about the human heart and the mysteries that live there. . . . I don’t reread many books, because life is too short. I will be rereading this one.”

The novel follows the life of Edgar, a mute boy who grows up on a dog breeding farm in rural Wisconsin, where Wroblewski grew up. Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic barn, a fateful vision in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language.

Poet Mark Doty hails The Story of Edgar Sawtelle as “an American Hamlet, both ghost story and melodrama, a coming-of-age tale, a hymn to the land—and, central to it all, some of the best writing about the inner lives of dogs anywhere.”

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Wroblewski thinks of a novel as “a braid of images, sounds, and references to other stories. . . . They submerge, then rise to the surface, then submerge again.

It takes all those strands working together to create a novel.” Hear him discuss the varied literary influences woven throughout this remarkable story. “ Writing a novel is like crafting an instrument and the music for it simultaneously.” —David Wroblewski

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special event

daniel h. pink friday, january 22, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium Daniel H. Pink is the author of a trio of provocative best-selling books on the changing world of work.

His pivotal New York Times bestseller, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, charts the rise of right-brain thinking in modern economies and uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.

His book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need is the first American business book in the Japanese comic format known as manga.

Illustrated by award-winning artist Rob Ten Pas, it was one of the best-selling graphic novels of 2008 and the only graphic novel ever to become a Business Week bestseller.

At the Museum, he will share insights about his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The book includes thirty years of scientific research about the keys to high performance and satisfaction.

Dr. Mehmet Oz says, “Drive is the rare book that will get you to think and inspire you to act. Pink makes a strong, science-based case for rethinking motivation— and then provides the tools you need to transform your life.”

Pink’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Wired, where he is a contributing editor.

jerry bauer

In the summer of 2009, Pink was invited to talk at the world-renowned TED conference, an annual conference that invites the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers to speak.

Community partner:

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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booksmART

jacqueline woodson sunday, january 24, 3:00 p.m. horchow auditorium Jacqueline Woodson has earned a stellar reputation for her critically acclaimed, award-winning books for young children, teens, and young adults, including Coming On Home Soon (2004), an ALA Notable Book and Caldecott Honor recipient, Show Way (2005), Feathers (2007), and After Tupac and D. Foster (2009), all of which received Newbery Honors; Miracle’s Boys (2000), winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Hush (2002), a National Book Award nominee; and Locomotion (2003), a National Book Award finalist. She was also the recipient, in 2006, of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement for the body of her work.

Ticket Prices Full Adult $16 Reduced Adult $14 Student $10

The author grew up moving back and forth between South Carolina and Brooklyn until her grandmother finally settled in Brooklyn, where Woodson still lives.

She is known for the detailed physical landscapes she writes into each of her books. She places boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, racial—and then has her characters break through physical and psychological boundaries to create strong and emotional stories that resonate deeply with readers of all ages. “ I wrote on everything and everywhere. I remember my

Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I chalked stories across sidewalks and penciled tiny tales in notebook margins. I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.” —Jacqueline Woodson

distinguished writers

mary oliver friday, january 29, 7:30 p.m. first presbyterian church of dallas 408 park avenue, dallas, texas 75201 Mary Oliver is firmly established in the pantheon of America’s great poets. She is renowned for her evocative nature-inspired imagery, which transforms the everyday world into a place of magic and discovery. Poet Stanley Kunitz said, “Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing.”

Oliver represents something of a modern-day Thoreau whose poems are both classic and intensely intimate, striking the same personal-universal chord as Rilke and Rumi.

She has received countless distinctions and awards, including the Pulitzer Prize (for American Primitive) and the National Book Award for Poetry (for New and Selected Poems), and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

rachel giese brown

Born in 1935, she began writing poetry at age fourteen. To date, she has published eighteen volumes of poetry and six books of prose, including Thirst (2006), Red Bird (2008), and The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (2008), and an hour-long CD, At Blackwater Pond (2006), on which she reads forty-two of her poems.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15

“Poetry is meant to be heard.” —Mary Oliver Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org Visit the Trinity River Audubon Center in February and receive 50% off admission upon presentation of your Arts & Letters Live ticket stub.

Arts & Letters Live’s event with Mary Oliver is in conjunction with First Presbyterian Church of Dallas’s 2010 Brown Lecture Series weekend on “Poetry and Faith.”

For those interested in extending their experience through further reflection, poetry writing,

For information on the center, visit trinityriveraudubon.org.

Community partner:

and sketching workshops at the Dallas Arboretum on Saturday, January 30, visit firstpresdallas.org/brownlectures for details and registration.

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artful musings

vocal colors a vibrant collage of arts on stage tuesday, february 9, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium Inspired by the exhibitions All the World’s a Stage and Performance/Art At the heart of an artist’s struggle to create is the desire to find a voice, capture a moment, tell a story, and be heard—irrespective of a chosen medium, whether canvas or clay, poetry or prose, aria or anthem. From early religious rites to the germination of the operatic genre in Renaissance Florence, the cross-pollination of performance and visual art has journeyed across the globe and spilled out over the airwaves and into the digital era.

Romare Bearden, Soul Three, 1968, paper and fabric collage on board, Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund and Roberta Coke Camp Fund, 2004.11, © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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Making their debut with Arts & Letters Live are Dallasarea favorite soprano Ava Pine (Dallas Opera, BBC Symphony Orchestra), vivacious mezzo-soprano Jamie Van Eyck (Wolf Trap Opera, Glimmerglass Opera), ardent Puerto Rican tenor Javier Abreu (Gran Teatro del Liceu, New York City Opera), and commanding bass-baritone Ryan McKinny (Houston Grand Opera, Deutsche Opera Berlin). The quartet of nationally renowned vocalists collaborates with the uncommonly versatile pianist Joseph Li (Houston Grand Opera, Aspen Music Festival) and Dallas-area dancers and actors. Together they celebrate the arts with an everchanging pastiche of our collective cultural landscape.

Classic riches from Renoir and Chabrier merge with soulful samples of Romare Bearden and Scott Joplin to create a memorable and show-stopping performance.

This production marks the sixth collaborative performance between Arts & Letters Live and artistic programmer Ryan Taylor, whose work has previously been featured in Secrets of the Sky and Sea, generation m, and Shakespeare Unplugged.

fresh ink

nina subin

joshua ferris and adam haslett friday, february 19, 7:00 p.m. horchow auditorium Don’t miss the chance to hear these two rising literary stars as they explore common threads of love, family, and the challenges of modern life in their new novels.

Author Malcolm Gladwell says of Adam Haslett, “He has the rarest of talents: the ability to combine a powerful intelligence with storytelling that is both elegant and suspenseful, and to break your heart in the process.” Haslett’s short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. His eagerly anticipated debut novel, Union Atlantic (January 2010), is a deeply affecting portrait of the first decade of the 21st century. At the heart of Union Atlantic is a test of wills between a young banker and a retired schoolteacher.

Drawn into their conflict is a troubled high school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of them.

brigitte lacombe

Joshua Ferris’s novel Then We Came to the End was one of the most acclaimed literary debuts of the last several years. It is a wickedly funny examination of corporate office culture during the decline of the Internet boom. Author Geoff Dyer called it “a wildly original, totally off-the-wall, all-around wonderful first novel.” A finalist for the National Book Award, the book was one of the New York Times “10 Best Books of the Year.” His latest novel, The Unnamed, is the story of a marriage in turmoil, and a meditation on the unseen forces of nature and desire. The Unnamed is a luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human connection.

Tickets to Fresh Ink programs are included with paid admission to the Museum.

Order tickets in advance to guarantee your seat.

DMA Members: FREE Adults: $10 Seniors 65+/Military: $7 Students: $5 Children Under 12: FREE Register online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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texas bound

texas stories i monday, february 22, 7:30 p.m. dee and charles wyly theatre at&t performing arts center 2400 flora street, dallas, texas 75201 G. W. Bailey reads Matt Clark’s The Crowned Heads of Pecos Lydia Mackay reads Jennifer Mathieu’s Thinking Inside the Box, but Living Outside the Office Ticket Prices Full $37 / Reduced $32 / Student $15 Visual arts students from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts are creating works of art inspired by these stories.

(Actor to be announced) reads Mark Wisniewski’s Stricken Brad Leland reads Larry L. King’s Driver’s Education About the actors: G. W. Bailey: The Closer, M*A*S*H, Police Academy. Lydia Mackay: A Streetcar Named Desire, As You Like It, The Seagull. Named “Best Local Actress” by the Dallas Observer. Brad Leland: Friday Night Lights, Hancock, American Buffalo.

booksmART

tim keating

gary paulsen sunday, february 28, 3:00 p.m. horchow auditorium With more than twenty-six million books in print, Gary Paulsen is one of America’s most popular writers for young people. He has won three Newbery Honor Awards for Dogsong (1985), The Winter Room (1989), and Hatchet (1987). School Library Journal included Hatchet in their list of “One Hundred Books That Shaped the Century.”

Ticket Prices Full Adult $16 Reduced Adult $14 Student $10

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His latest novel, Woods Runner (January 2010), is set during the American Revolution and tells the story of thirteen-year-old Samuel, whose parents are taken prisoner. He is forced to go deep into enemy territory, risking his life to find his parents.

texas bound

selected shorts: a touch of magic monday, march 1, 7:30 p.m. dee and charles wyly theatre at&t performing arts center 2400 flora street, dallas, texas 75201 Isaiah Sheffer reads Andrew Lam’s The Palmist and Saki’s The Occasional Garden Sonia Manzano reads Isabel Allende’s Two Words Thomas Gibson reads Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt

About the actors:

richard termine

Isaiah Sheffer Founder and Artistic Director of Symphony Space as well as host and director of Selected Shorts live at Symphony Space and on tour Sonia Manzano Selected television credits: “Maria” on Sesame Street for almost forty years. Selected stage credits: original cast of Godspell, The Vagina Monologues, The Exonerated.

Thomas Gibson Selected television and film credits: Criminal Minds, Dharma and Greg, Chicago Hope, Far and Away, The Age of Innocence, Eyes Wide Shut. Selected Broadway credits: Molière’s The Miser, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, David Hare’s Map of the World, Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Ticket Prices

Selected Shorts on KERA 90.1 Tune in to the award-winning public radio series featuring classic and bold new stories read by acclaimed actors, Saturdays at 7:00 p.m.

Get 10% off event night dinners at One Arts Plaza restaurants with your Texas Bound tickets. See page 28 for details.

Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org Don’t miss the other Texas Bound programs this season: February 22, April 19, May 3, and June 28.

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artful musings

madison smartt bell and samella lewis thursday, march 4, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium In conjunction with the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture Exhibition introduction by Dr. Roslyn Walker, Senior Curator of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Madison Smartt Bell is the author of Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, the first biography about the fascinating leader of the Haitian revolution to appear in English in more than fifty years. Bell has written thirteen novels, including the Haitian Revolutionary trilogy—a dramatic imagining of the revolution that transformed the French colony of Saint-Domingue into the independent black nation of Haiti. All Souls Rising, the first novel in the trilogy, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Award for best book of the year dealing with matters of race.

Jacob Lawrence, The March, 1995, silkscreen, Collection of Curtis E. Ransom, © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Ticket Prices Full $20 Reduced $15 Student $10 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org This program is supported by Curtis E. Ransom.

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Samella Lewis is a groundbreaking artist, art historian, curator, and educator. Her seminal book African American Art and Artists reveals the rich legacy of work by African American artists from the colonial era through the present. Dr. Lewis’s own work is represented in the collections of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as in many private collections. She will share memories of her friend and fellow artist Jacob Lawrence. “ Art is not a luxury as many people might think—it is a necessity. It documents history—it helps to educate people and stores knowledge for generations to come.”

—Samella Lewis

special event

lisa see thursday, march 11, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium

At this event, See will share insights from her newest novel, Shanghai Girls, which is set close to See’s home: Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Two sisters, Pearl and May, leave Shanghai in 1937 and go to Los Angeles after their father gambled away their family’s wealth and sold them to suitors in arranged marriages. It is a story of immigration, identity, war, and love—but at its heart is a story of sisters who share hopes and dreams as well as jealousies and rivalries.

See’s first book, On Gold Mountain: The One-HundredYear Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, traced the journey of her great-grandfather, Fong See, who overcame many obstacles to become the one-hundredyear-old godfather of Los Angeles’s Chinatown and the patriarch of a sprawling family. She interviewed nearly one hundred of her relatives while researching the book in order to paint a clearer portrait of how her racially mixed family developed. For more information, visit lisasee.com.

patricia williams

Lisa See, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007), and Shanghai Girls (2009), has always been intrigued by stories that have been lost, forgotten, or deliberately covered up, whether in the past or happening in the world today. In her novels, she also explores the bonds of female friendship, the power of words, and the desire all women have to be heard.

The Philadelphia Inquirer raved, “With Snow Flower, See has written a novel that ranks with the best fiction of Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, the modern luminaries of Chinese storytelling.” Amy Tan herself called it “achingly beautiful, a marvel of imagination.”

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Wine reception and book signing following the event at the Crow Collection of Asian Art.

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fresh ink

melanie benjamin friday, march 19, 7:00 p.m. horchow auditorium The March Late Night celebrates Lewis Carroll’s literary masterpiece Alice in Wonderland and Tim Burton’s movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway. Come explore Wonderland, enjoy a Mad Hatter’s tea party, and delve into Melanie Benjamin’s debut novel, Alice I Have Been (January 12, 2010).

dennis hauser

This spellbinding historical novel, based on remarkable research, is an imaginative rendering of the life of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll. Benjamin was inspired to write Alice’s story when she saw an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago called Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll.

Tickets to Fresh Ink programs are included with paid admission to the Museum.

Order tickets in advance to guarantee your seat.

DMA Members: FREE Adults: $10 Seniors 65+/Military: $7 Students: $5 Children Under 12: FREE Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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Alice’s father was the Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, where her family lived across the street from mathematics professor Charles Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll. During the 1860s, Dodgson told the Liddell children stories as they picnicked in the English countryside, but then a rift occurred between him and the Liddell family that no one ever spoke of again.

What happened that fateful summer when “wonderland” was born? In the book, eighty-two-year-old Alice mines her way to the heart of this question. Alice I Have Been captures the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego. “ Focusing on three eras in Alice’s life, Benjamin offers a finely wrought portrait of Alice that seemingly blends fact and fiction. This is book club gold.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

john grandits visiting artist in the center for creative connections thursday, friday, and saturday march 18–20 Award-winning book and magazine designer John Grandits has been fascinated by type and printing all his life. He is the author of two books of concrete poetry: Technically, It’s Not My Fault and Blue Lipstick.

His protagonist’s hilarious views of the world are expressed through a series of concrete poems in which words, ideas, type, and art combine to make pictures and patterns. You may have to turn the book sideways and upside down to read them, but laughter is 100% guaranteed.

diy@dma: concrete poetry thursday, march 18, 6:30–8:30 p.m. tech lab Try your own hand at concrete poetry inspired by works of art.

late nights at the dallas museum of art friday, march 19, 8:30–10:00 p.m. c3 theater

DIY@DMA: Concrete Poetry and

John Grandits will share insights into his creative process and information about the history of concrete poetry from A.D. 800 to the present (including one from Alice in Wonderland). Then you will write and design your own concrete poems inspired by works in the collections!

of Art are free with paid admission

Late Nights at the Dallas Museum to the Museum; all ages welcome.

Young Writers Workshop: $10 Register online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

young writers workshop saturday, march 20, 1:00–4:00 p.m. tech lab Teens 13–18 years old who love to write and design can explore the Museum’s collections with John Grandits and then create their own concrete poems either by hand or in the Tech Lab.

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distinguished writers

tracy kidder tuesday, march 23, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium

gabriel amadeus cooney

Publishers Weekly hailed Tracy Kidder as a writer “with an anthropologist’s eye and a novelist’s pen”; the author of nine books, he is a master of the nonfiction narrative. His ability to transform the ordinary into something extraordinary has earned him the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for Soul of a New Machine and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Among Schoolchildren.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Kidder graduated from Harvard University in 1967 and served as a lieutenant in Vietnam until 1969; he chronicled his wartime experiences in his memoir My Detachment. He currently serves as a contributing editor to the Atlantic. His enormously influential book Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003) captured two global health crises—tuberculosis and AIDS—through the eyes of Dr. Paul Farmer, a single-minded physician who founded Partners in Health, the only health-care provider in Haiti’s Plateau Central.

While shadowing Dr. Farmer, Kidder stumbled across an African medical student and refugee from the civil war and genocide of 1990s Burundi who made his way to New York City with only $200 to his name, no English skills, and no contacts. Kidder’s highly acclaimed recent release Strength in What Remains is Deo’s story, an inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him. Alex Kotlowitz calls it “a tour de force. . . . His journey is the story of our times, one that keeps the rest of us from forgetting.” “ What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page.” —Tracy Kidder

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booksmART

jan brett sunday, march 28, 3:00 p.m. horchow auditorium With over thirty-four million books in print, including The Mitten (1989), The Owl and the Pussycat (1991), and The Hat (1997), Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost author-illustrators of children’s books. Her titles are instantly recognizable to children and adults alike, and her exquisitely detailed illustrations bring stories to life for readers of all ages.

In her new book, The Easter Egg (February 2010), Brett introduces Hoppi, a lovable bunny. Hoppi is just old enough to join in the fun of decorating eggs for the Easter Rabbit, and if he can just make the winning egg he will get to be his helper on Easter. Brett’s remarkable illustrations filled with dazzling eggs and their gifted makers—Flora Bunny, Aunt Sassyfrass, Hans Vanderabbit, and others—are sure to delight.

As a student at the Boston Museum School, Brett spent hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. “It was overwhelming to see the room-size landscapes and towering stone sculptures, and then moments later to refocus on delicately embroidered kimonos and ancient porcelain,” she says. “I’m delighted and surprised when fragments of these beautiful images come back to me in my painting.” “ I remember the special quiet of rainy days when I felt that I could enter the pages of my beautiful picture books. Now I try to re-create that feeling of believing that the imaginary place I’m drawing really exists. The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.”—Jan Brett

Ticket Prices Full Adult $16 Reduced Adult $14 Student $10 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

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artful musings

sarah dunant tuesday, april 13, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium

charlie hopkinson

British novelist, broadcaster, and critic Sarah Dunant is best known in the United States for the historical novels The Birth of Venus (2004), In the Company of the Courtesan (2006), and Sacred Hearts (2009), her triptych of books set in the Italian Renaissance.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Set in a convent in Ferrara in 1570, Sacred Hearts is a multifaceted love story encompassing the passions of the flesh, the exultation of the spirit, and the power of friendship. A complex relationship of trust and betrayal exists between a rebellious young novice, Serafina, and Soeur Zuana, an older, sympathetic nun who runs the convent’s hospital and pharmacy.

Serafina has been ripped from her proposed marriage and confined against her will—for life; she sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core. Outside the convent’s walls, the dictates of the Counter-Reformation begin to purge the Catholic Church and impose a regime of oppression. This novel is ultimately about the indomitable spirit of women in an age when religious, political, and social forces were all stacked against them. The Washington Post says, “This novel unequivocably does what fiction is supposed to do and rarely does: It takes us to a place we could never personally experience.” “ [W]hen it comes to writing, I just want to say that the novel is not the author. Just as the life is not the work or the work the life; instead literature is a kind of alchemy: turning lead into gold. Or at least that’s the ambition.”

—Sarah Dunant Before the event: 6:30 p.m. Join Dr. Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art, on a tour of artworks in the Museum’s collections that resonate with themes in Sacred Hearts.

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fresh ink

deborah feingold

elizabeth kostova friday, april 16, 7:00 p.m. horchow auditorium April’s Late Night celebrates the exhibition The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874. Elizabeth Kostova’s highly anticipated second novel, The Swan Thieves (January 12, 2010), resonates with this same setting and time period. The central character is a painter whose great talent is hindered by his troubled mind. This story of obsession, history’s losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope will captivate readers.

Kostova’s epic novel The Historian (2005), about Vlad the Impaler, was the first debut novel ever to enter the New York Times Best Seller list at #1. It now boasts an estimated four million copies worldwide.

Order tickets in advance to guarantee your seat.

Tickets to Fresh Ink programs are included with paid admission to the Museum.

DMA members: FREE; Adults: $10; Seniors 65+/Military: $7; Students: $5; Children Under 12: FREE

booksmART

jeff kinney sunday, april 18, 2:00 p.m. first united methodist church of dallas 1928 ross avenue, dallas, texas 75201 Jeff Kinney always knew he wanted to be a cartoonist.

The wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series was born out of an experiment in mixing cartoons and “traditional” writing. Kinney says his goal “was to write a book that would make people laugh.” The #1 New York Times best-selling books, written like pencil-to-paper diary entries by the protagonist, Greg Heffley, detail Greg’s trials as a scrawny kid making the life-changing transition from elementary to middle school. Over sixteen million books are currently in print in the U.S. Twentieth Century Fox will release a live-action film in April 2010 starring Zachary Gordon.

Ticket Prices Full Adult $16 Reduced Adult $14 Student $10

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texas bound

texas stories ii monday, april 19, 7:30 p.m. dee and charles wyly theatre potter rose performance hall at&t performing arts center 2400 flora street, dallas, texas 75201 Julie White reads Sarah Bird’s The Goodbye Boy and Cristina Henríquez’s The Rejection Files James Crawford (with Will Dunlap on cello) reads Will Dunlap’s Elegy John Benjamin Hickey reads Tim O’Brien’s Faith

About the actors: Julie White Selected film and television credits: Six Feet Under, Grace Under Fire, Transformers. Broadway credits: The Heidi Chronicles, Dinner with Friends, Barbra’s Wedding, The Little Dog Laughed (Tony Award).

James Crawford Dallas Theater Center’s production of A Christmas Carol, Picnic at Triad Stages in North Carolina, professor of theater at SMU Ticket Prices Full $37 / Reduced $32 / Student $15 Purchase tickets online at

John Benjamin Hickey Selected Broadway credits: Mary Stuart, Love! Valour! Compassion!, The Crucible, Cabaret. Selected film credits: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Flags of Our Fathers.

www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org Don’t miss the other Texas Bound programs on February 22, March 1, May 3, and June 28.

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Get 10% off event night dinners at One Arts Plaza restaurants with your Texas Bound tickets. See page 28 for details.

special event

david sedaris monday, april 26, 7:30 p.m. mcfarlin memorial auditorium southern methodist university 6405 boaz lane, dallas, texas 75275

Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, as well as the best-selling collections of personal essays Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and Esquire, and his original radio pieces can often be heard on This American Life. There are a total of seven million copies of his books in print, and they have been translated into twenty-five languages.

Sedaris has been nominated for three Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word and Best Comedy Album. His most recent live album is David Sedaris: For Your Listening Pleasure (November 2009).

laurie rosenwald

Back by popular demand to read new and unpublished material! David Sedaris may well be the closest thing the literary world has these days to a rock star—his speaking engagements are now consistently standing-room only. The skill with which Sedaris slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that he is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today.

Ticket prices are based on seat location and range from $25 to $65.

Purchase online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

In 2001 Sedaris received the Thurber Prize for American Humor and Time magazine named him “Humorist of the Year.” His wit has been compared to Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; Publishers Weekly dubbed him “Garrison Keillor’s evil twin.”

Promotional partner:

“ Sedaris belongs on any list of people writing in English at the moment who are revising our ideas about what’s funny.”—San Francisco Chronicle

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elena seibert

distinguished writers

peter carey and colm tóibín

steve pyke

wednesday, april 28, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

The Evening Standard called Australian writer Peter Carey “one of the greatest story-tellers of our time.”

He is one of only two writers to have won the prestigious Booker Prize twice, first for the 19th-century love story Oscar and Lucinda, which was made into a film starring Ralph Feinnes and Cate Blanchett, and then for True History of the Kelly Gang, a fictionalized autobiography of Australia’s most notorious gangster.

His forthcoming novel, Parrot and Olivier in America, is a dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey to America. It is a portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship and a completely improbable work of art.

Internationally renowned Irish author Colm Tóibín has established himself as a major voice in contemporary literature through his lucid prose and a keen sensibility for characterization. The Los Angeles Times says, “Colm Tóibín leads a generation of Irish novelists.” He is the author of six novels including The Blackwater Lightship, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Master, his fictional portrait of Henry James, which won the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Tóibín’s latest novel, Brooklyn, is set in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself. The New Yorker raves, “Tóibín creates a narrative of remarkable power, writing with a spareness and intensity that give the minutest shades of feeling immense emotional impact.”

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texas bound

texas stories iii monday, may 3, 7:30 p.m. dee and charles wyly theatre potter rose performance hall at&t performing arts center 2400 flora street, dallas, texas 75201 Raphael Parry and Sally Nystuen Vahle read selections from David Eagleman’s SUM: Forty Tales of the Afterlife Matthew Gray reads K. L. Cook’s Breaking Glass (Actor to be announced) reads Steven Gullion’s The Six-Hundred Dollar Dog

About the actors: Raphael Parry Director, actor, and host of Texas Bound for over thirteen years, and Executive and Artistic Director of Shakespeare Dallas Sally Nystuen Vahle Founding member of Kitchen Dog Theater, current member of the Dallas Theater Center Resident Acting Company, and faculty member at the University of North Texas Matthew Gray Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Taming of the Shrew, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Misanthrope; member of the Dallas Theater Center Resident Acting Company

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Community partner:

Don’t miss the other Texas Bound programs this season: February 22, March 1, April 19, and June 28.

Get 10% off event night dinners at One Arts Plaza restaurants with your Texas Bound tickets. See page 28 for details.

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special event

robert kurson shadow divers: mystery and adventure at the bottom of the atlantic thursday, may 6, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium Hailed by the New York Times as a “pulse-quickening real-life thriller,” Shadow Divers is a story of riveting adventure in the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

An unexpected discovery in 1991 began a six-year quest to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II. Though official records denied it, and no historian or government could explain it, a German U-boat with the remains of fifty-six Nazi soldiers lay wrecked sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey. Join Robert Kurson as he shares insights into the remarkable discovery and the subsequent pursuit to identify the lost submarine and its nameless crew.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15

Robert Kurson, a native of Chicago, holds degrees in philosophy and law. He quit a practice in real estate law to pursue a writing career. Kurson’s awardwinning stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine, and Esquire, where he is a contributing editor. “ The phrase ‘page-turner’ is bandied about too cheaply, but ‘Shadow Divers’ is the real thing.”—Dallas Morning News Before the event:

Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org Sponsored by

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6:30 p.m. Join Dr. Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art, for a tour of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea. The exhibition is drawn from the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art and from local collections and explores how visual artists of the modern period (1850–present) have represented coastal landscapes.

special event

laura w. bush shealah craighead, white house photographer

friday, may 7, 7:30 p.m. mcfarlin memorial auditorium, smu 6405 boaz lane, dallas, texas 75275 Arts & Letters Live is honored to present Mrs. Laura W. Bush, who will share insights from her forthcoming memoir to be released by Scribner in May 2010.

Mrs. Laura W. Bush is actively involved in issues of national and global concern, with a particular emphasis on education, health care, and human rights. As First Lady, she made a historic trip to Afghanistan in 2005. Her involvement began there in 2001, when she delivered the weekly presidential radio address to call attention to the plight of women and children suffering under the Taliban.

A former teacher and librarian, Mrs. Bush convened a Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, providing a forum for prominent scholars and educators to share research on the best ways for parents and caregivers to prepare children for lifelong learning.

She is an enthusiastic proponent of teacher recruitment programs such as Teach for America. In 2001 Mrs. Bush partnered with the Library of Congress to launch the first National Book Festival. The Festival has grown each year, drawing more than 120,000 booklovers from across the nation to Washington, D.C., in 2008. Mrs. Bush established the Texas Book Festival in 1995, and it continues to thrive today. She hosted leaders from around the world for the White House Conference on Advancing Global Literacy. Her leadership of this effort continues in her role as Honorary Ambassador for the United Nations Literacy Decade.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Mrs. Bush was born in Midland. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Southern Methodist University and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Texas. She taught in public schools in Dallas, Houston, and Austin and worked as a public school librarian. In 1977 she met and married George Walker Bush.

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distinguished writers

isabel allende thursday, may 13, 7:30 p.m. first united methodist church of dallas 1928 ross avenue, dallas, texas 75201

william gordon

With an impressive richness of detail and a narrative wit, New York Times–best-selling author Isabel Allende’s forthcoming novel, Island Beneath the Sea (April 27, 2010), spans four decades. It tells the story of Tété, a slave and concubine who is determined to take control of her own destiny in a society where that would seem impossible. When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island of Saint-Domingue in 1770, it is with powdered wigs in his trunks and dreams of financial success in his mind. But as the bloody revolution of Toussaint Louverture reaches the gates of the plantation, he and Tété flee the island that will become Haiti for the decadence and opportunity of New Orleans.

Ticket Prices Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

Allende’s debut novel, The House of Spirits (1982), received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination.

She is the author of nine previous novels, including Daughter of Fortune (1999), Portrait in Sepia (2001), and Inés of My Soul (2006), two collections of stories, four memoirs, including The Sum of Our Days (2008), and a trilogy of young adult novels. Author Barbara Kingsolver said Allende’s stories “are delicate, their images akin to poetry. . . . and . . . seemed to me like a plate of hors d’oeuvres, each one tempting, some as exquisite as caviar.”

Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents; many have been adapted for film, theater, opera, and ballet. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in Peru, raised in Chile, and exiled to Venezuela in 1973, she now lives in California. “ Write what should not be forgotten.” —Isabel Allende

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special event

annette gordon-reed tuesday, june 1, 7:30 p.m. horchow auditorium Annette Gordon-Reed won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction for the Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008), a multigenerational epic about an American slave family with ties to the third president; she has been lauded as one of our country’s most distinguished presidential scholars and authorities on race.

She currently serves as a professor of law and history at New York Law School and Rutgers respectively.

Reared in segregated Conroe, Texas, she became fascinated with Thomas Jefferson in elementary school after reading a children’s biography of him, narrated by a fictional slave boy. At fourteen, she joined the Book-of-the-Month Club (concealing her status as a minor) to receive Fawn Brodie’s biography Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. Gordon-Reed said, “The fact that he loved books and I loved books was something that attracted me to him.” The New Yorker hailed her first book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), as “brilliant.”

Ticket Prices

Gordon-Reed is the living definition of a history detective. In 1998 the news broke that DNA tests revealed a near-certain confirmation of a genetic link between Jefferson and Hemings’s youngest child, Eston. Publishers Weekly hailed The Hemingses of Monticello as “fascinating, wise, and of the utmost importance.” The Washington Post said that Gordon-Reed “has

Full $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online at www.tickets.DallasMuseumofArt.org

succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire slave family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.”

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special event

ira glass saturday, june 12, 7:30 p.m. charles w. eisemann center 2351 performance drive richardson, texas 75082

stuart mullenberg

In an age of handheld technology and constantly accessible entertainment, Ira Glass is simultaneously leading a journalistic revolution and bridging the generational gap via a more classic route—the radio— as host of This American Life, an award-winning program that is heard on more than five hundred public radio stations each week by over 1.8 million listeners.

Most weeks, the podcast of the program is the most popular podcast in America.

Ticket prices are based on seat location and range from $25 to $45.

Purchase Ira Glass tickets online at eisemanncenter.com or by calling 972-744-4650.

Promotional partner:

The New York Times calls Glass “a storyteller who filters his interviews and impressions through a distinctive literary imagination and eccentric intelligence.”

Since establishing This American Life in 1995, Glass has piloted the show to the heights of journalistic and broadcasting excellence, garnering such distinctions as the Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards, as well as the Edward R. Murrow and Overseas Press Club awards. In 2001 Time magazine named Glass “Best Radio Show Host in America.”

But Glass’s talent for engaging listeners has taken him beyond the realm of radio: the first season of the television series This American Life won two Emmys, and its second season won another. Glass also compiled The New Kings of Nonfiction in 2007, collaborated on a This American Life–inspired comic book entitled Radio: An Illustrated Guide, and served as an executive producer for Unaccompanied Minors, a movie based on a story featured on the show.

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texas bound

heroes & anti-heroes monday, june 28, 7:30 p.m. dee and charles wyly theatre at&t performing arts center 2400 flora street, dallas, texas 75201 A special evening of stories celebrating the Dallas Theater Center’s world premiere of the musical It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman!

Matthew Gray reads Secret Skin and The Binding of Isaac by Michael Chabon Lee Trull reads Anti-heroes by George Saunders Harriet Harris reads Mother in the Trenches by Robert Olen Butler Raphael Parry reads Powder by Tobias Wolff Matthew Stephen Tompkins reads The Champ by T. Coraghessan Boyle

About the actors: * Matthew Gray Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Taming of

the Shrew, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Misanthrope * Lee Trull A Midsummer Night’s Dream, In the Beginning,

A Christmas Carol Harriet Harris Present Laughter and Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony Award) on Broadway; Desperate Housewives, Frasier Raphael Parry Director, Texas Bound, and Executive and Artistic Director of Shakespeare Dallas

Ticket Prices

Matthew Stephen Tompkins Dallas Theater Center’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seven-time recipient of Dallas Theater Critics Forum Award for Outstanding Actor.

Don’t miss the other Texas Bound

* Member of the Dallas Theater Center Resident Acting Company

Full $37 / Reduced $32 / Student $15

programs this season: February 22, March 1, April 19, and May 3.

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more information •

For programs that take place in Horchow Auditorium on Thursday evenings, Museum admission is included in the ticket price.

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Texas Bound programs at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre will take place in the Potter Rose Performance Hall.

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Don’t feel like making the long drive home? Take advantage of special packages that include an overnight stay at The Adolphus and event tickets! For more information, visit hoteladolphus.com or call 800-221-9083.

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Show your Arts & Letters Live ticket or e-mail order confirmation and receive a 10% discount on your meal at any of the following One Arts Plaza restaurants: Screen Door, Fedora, Dali, Jorge’s, and Tei-An. Valid only on the date of the event and does not cover alcohol, tax, or gratuity.

staff Director: Carolyn Bess Assistant Producer: Helen Seslowsky Program Manager: Katie Hutton

Public Relations: Elysa Nelson Admin. Assistant: Carolyn Hartley

Experience the style and sophistication of cuisine inspired by our global collections.

Serving lunch Tuesday-Friday; call 214-922-1858 for reservations.

Available for private events every day.

Visit DallasMuseumofArt-Events.com.

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become an annual series supporter!

We rely on contributions from enthusiasts like you. Any donation, no matter the size, goes a long way in helping us bring outstanding authors and artists to our community. Become a Supporter now by calling 214-922-1270!

[Benefits are cumulative.] $250–$499

$1,500–$1,999

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Advance ordering privileges Name recognition in event programs 20% off Arts & Letters Live–related purchases in the Museum Store

$2,000–$2,499 •

$500–$749 •

An invitation for two to a reception with author David Wroblewski

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$750–$999 •

An exclusive audio CD, Texas Bound Producer’s Picks— your choice of four volumes

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Reserved seating for two people at events you purchased Opportunities for domestic travel organized by the Museum

$1,250–$1,499 •

An invitation for two to a reception with author Tracy Kidder

A complimentary copy of the latest book by each of our 2010 Distinguished Writers, signed by the author Opportunities for international travel organized by the Museum

$2,500–$4,999 •

$1,000–$1,249 •

A complimentary copy of the new audio CD David Sedaris: For Your Listening Pleasure

Two complimentary tickets to hear David Sedaris on April 26, plus a private pre-event book signing with the author

$5,000 and above •

Dinner for two with an author of your choice* (subject to author’s availability)

*Please note that receptions with authors might not take place on the day of their event.

Arts & Letters Live is supported by the Kay Cattarulla Endowment for the Literary and Performing Arts, The George and Fay Young Foundation, The Hoglund Foundation, The Eugene McDermott Foundation, and Annual Series Supporters. Additional support provided by Friends of the Dallas Public Library.

Air transportation provided in part by American Airlines. Hotel accommodations provided in part by The Adolphus. Promotional partners include The Dallas Morning News, Einstein Printing, and

arts & letters live

Nonprofit U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 1920 Dallas, TX

1717 north harwood st dallas tx 75201

Beginning December 14, order your tickets online at DallasMuseumofArt.org/ALL, by phone, or by mail order.

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