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This sweet opportunity comes to us from the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Pease Park Conservancy, and Ride Bikes Austin – so we know it's a damned good thing indeed. Take the self-guided Art & Parks Tour to explore the best of what Downtown Austin art and parks have to offer through this selection of curated murals, artworks, and green spaces. You can sign up anytime, so click that URL and get ready to learn the most vibrantly visual parts of your city soon – live and in person.

Artists talking about art and the planet on which it’s made – yes, that would be Earth, citizen – is the focus of this new environmental series led by folks from the local LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and refugee communities. This inaugural event is a panel discussion moderated by Paloma Mayorga, featuring artists Jamal Hussain, Kill Joy, and Mueni Loko Rudd, and takes place on the awe-inspiring grounds of the Eastside’s Dimension Sculpture Park, along with an interactive art exhibition by Darcie Book. Pro tip: Bring picnic blankets for sitting on the lawn! – Wayne Alan Brenner

Use your smartphone to access self-guided tours of the outdoor public art sited by UT's award-winning Landmarks program any time you feel like it. BONUS: There's also a free, docent-led tour starting at Marc Quinn's "Spiral of the Galaxy" (1501 Red River) on Sun., Jan. 8, 11am.

If you caught the 2018 doc McQueen, about the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, then you’re already familiar with the talents of his nephew and protégé Gary James McQueen, who was responsible for the stunning, under-the-skin skull sculptures featured in the opening credits. Those skulls, as represented via 3D lenticular artworks, form the basis of the Gary James McQueen exhibit – his first stateside – now running at West Chelsea Contemporary through March 24. – Kimberley Jones

When a fellow is named Tim McCool, you’ve got to hope he lives up to the moniker. We reckon that, as co-founder (with his dauntless spouse, Kira) of the right-there-in-the-garage Good Luck Have Fun Gallery off Enfield, this particular art-scene mover and shaker is as McCool as it gets. Evidence: The gallery’s newest show brings together the colorful and provocative work of four women artists – Aubree Dale, Aria Brownell, Wendy Rhode, and Barbara Miñarro – “who explore the relationships between individual identity and the collective, the process of making art and of making one’s self.” – Wayne Alan Brenner

Works by the annual Tito’s Prize Winner for Visual Arts – yes, that’s the Tito’s Handmade Vodka Tito, tyvm – are presented, as ever, by the community-forward creatives at Big Medium, and this year’s honoree is Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner. Come explore the new Big Medium space on South Congress, its gallery recently refurbished after a fire and freshly bright with Warner’s provocative digital interventions that fictionalize the Caribbean’s fraught past and interrogate that region’s historical photographic archive. – Wayne Alan Brenner

Art conservation can be a contradiction: to destroy to preserve. Thus it is with the HRC and its efforts to restore the Clarkson Stanfield album, one of the most remarkable volumes in the history of art photography. More correctly known as “100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson,” the collection of over 100 salted paper prints was collated by the photographers for landscape artist Stanfield and depicts the lords, laborers, clergy, and scientists of 19th-century Scotland and the landscapes in which they lived. Currently undergoing repairs, the center staff are using its deconstructed state to display 39 plates, along with more works from Hill and Adamson, as separate works since the first time they were bound. – Richard Whittaker

This local treasure of a venue, run by those Contemporary Austin folks who also bring us the Jones Center shows Downtown, is all about the outdoors – which is perfect for these trickily navigated times of ours, n'est-ce pas? Recommended: Stop by and breathe in the air, enjoy the lawns and gardens and the many examples of world-class sculpture arrayed across the property, and (as Frankie used to say) r-e-l-a-x.

Enter the fascinating world of illusions in this new venue that boasts a stunning array of intriguing visual, sensory, and educational experiences among new, unexplored optical wonderments.

Flowers are an integral part of the lives of the Broq-Pa peoples of the Indian subcontinent, a constant adornment for both men and women. The interplay of human and floral forms has fascinated artist Ziesook You and become the prevailing theme of her work onward from 2016. Since relocating to Austin two years ago, the internationally acclaimed artist has given a local twist to that body of work with this new collection featuring single mothers, seniors, and people with multicultural backgrounds as living vases for local flora. – Richard Whittaker

This place, ah, it's one of our favorite places in the entire city; and of course they're properly corona-closed. But check 'em out online right now – it's a rich, wonder-filled website – to whet your appetite for when things get back to … uh … are we still calling it "normal," these days?