Native America: In Translation
Through Jan. 5, 2025, Blanton Museum of Art
One thing I’ve loved about newer theatre or museums is the space given for land acknowledgement – statements about the ancestral roots of the space being used. Space that was not always ours, but taken. The Blanton’s latest exhibit tackles that question, but pushes the boundaries. It’s not just about what Native America was, but what it can be. Curator and lauded artist Wendy Red Star has assembled nine other Native artists to create a rich exploration of what life in America is today. Shown through a variety of mediums, something is guaranteed to resonate with the audience. Whether it’s the photos, paintings, videos, or multimedia works is up to you. – Cat McCarrey
Austin Pride & aGLIFF Present: Chicago
Monday 5, Meanwhile Brewing
I once saw a stage production of Chicago in New York City, where my dad and a boy cousin snoozed through it all except for during the song “Mr. Cellophane.” You, good Reader, obviously have more taste than they. For example, you might consider attending this fun and official Austin Pride event where you can see drag hosted by Nadine Hughes, music from DJ Tony Castro, and even get a beauty consultation from Gorg! Wellness & Aesthetics. Once you’ve done all that, set up your picnic blanket and chairs on the Meanwhile lawn for a free screening of Best Picture winner Chicago. I promise: There’s more to this picture than just “Mr. Cellophane,” although John C. Reilly does a pretty freakin’ good rendition of it. – James Scott
Let’s Get Ready for Pride!
Monday 5, Southeast Branch Library
Indoctrinate your children with the gay agenda! Just kidding, but you can craft some fans, bracelets, or signs that celebrate our commonalities and the things that make us different. Bring your own supplies if you want to make something in particular, otherwise they will supply basic crafting accoutrements. The big takeaway? Whoever you are, be proud of it. Then take that Pride to any of the local events celebrating queer folks around Austin. – James Renovitch
Gnome Gardens
Monday 5, Little Walnut Creek Branch Library
All people 11 or older reading this, buzz off! I’m talking only to kiddos 6-10 years old. Okay, now that the people 11 or older are gone, I’ll tell y’all the truth: Gnomes are real. The little guys with the triangle hats who often inhabit your neighbor’s lawn with little rakes and trowels? Yeah, they are real and they’re looking to move outta the suburbs. Alongside the cool librarians at the Little Walnut Creek Branch, you’re gonna help the gnomes by creating tiny gardens out of provided supplies. You’ll also design your own gnomes, and they’ll be able to live in your handmade home. Ain’t that cool? Making gnomes, sweet gnomes. – James Scott
Gabino Iglesias: House of Bone and Rain Book Signing
Tuesday 6, BookPeople
I used to read exclusively horror novels, and 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home disturbed me so much that I started reading romance. Austin’s own Gabino Iglesias, the sick genius who authored that award-winning novel, is back with another nail-biter. Billed as a Latinx Stand by Me, House of Bone and Rain is a gruesome, sad, and tender coming of age story that follows a group of boys avenging the death of one of their mothers. Best-selling thriller author Meg Gardiner, another Austinite, will ask Iglesias all about it Tuesday evening starting at 7pm. – Maggie Q. Thompson
Art in Motion: UMLAUF After Dark
Tuesday 6, Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum
If you seek a total smorgasbord for the senses, head to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum (after dark) Tuesday to be immersed: We’re talking interactive sculptures and live flow art and aerial performances. Local DJ Dámino will provide the tunes, and there will also be karaoke. When you’re watching people glide through the air, what do you crave? Opium? Absinthe? How ’bout lobster? Good, because Garbo’s food truck will be there too with their buttery rolls. $12 entry. – Maggie Q. Thompson
Virtual Read/Watch/Talk: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tuesday 6, Virtual
Have you been dying to talk to someone about the black-and-white Netflix series Ripley starring Andrew Scott and how it compares to the 1999 film starring Matt Damon, and how they each contrast with Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley? You’ll be in the right place Tuesday evening at 7 in the Austin Public Library’s online Teams meeting. Discuss all the different ways the psychological thriller was approached and how the enigmatic character of Tom Ripley lends itself to multiple interpretations. Which is your favorite Marge, Tom, Dickie, or Freddie? Do you prefer your villains more dastardly or forgivable? Read the book, watch the films, and let your thoughts percolate before book club. – Kat McNevins
Terror Tuesday: Anaconda
Tuesday 6, Alamo South Lamar
“Tales of monstrous, man-eating anacondas have been recounted for centuries.” So begins the opening scroll of Anaconda, before adding a couple more paragraphs of suspect scientific facts about the title creature. It’s over-the-top and overblown and, man, just a really good time. This movie has everything. J-Lo as a documentarian! Ice Cube as a cameraman! Jon Voight with a ponytail and a bad accent! A villainous snake bent on revenge, and shown through a perfect mashup of bad CGI and lazy practical effects guaranteed to look twice as deliciously awful onscreen. This screening will leave you breathless – not from being squeezed by the anaconda, but from joyous laughter. Also, it was just J-Lo’s birthday, so let’s give one of the iconic Leo’s some honor with one of her early explorations. – Cat McCarrey
Community Hours at the Thinkery
Tuesday 6, The Thinkery
Children’s growing minds and bodies are always looking for something to do, and it’s costly keeping them occupied. So bring them to Thinkery children’s museum, which “strives to be an inclusive, friendly, inspiring space to learn for our entire community, regardless of income, mental/physical abilities, ethnicity, nationality, race, sexual orientation, gender expression/identity or family status.” From 3 to 7pm Tuesdays, kiddos can visit all the STEAM activities and exhibits like Train Town, the Spark Shop, the Story Nook, and the Move! Studio to have tons of fun while learning and wearing themselves out before bedtime. And it’s all free! Just don’t let them start looking at the not-free items at Toy Joy. – Kat McNevins
Queer Black Women Alliance Presents: First Wednesday
Wednesday 7, the Dogwood Rock Rose
Having fun and meeting new people is harder than TV makes it seem. Good thing there’s orgs like Queer Black Women Alliance, who’ve got another event series starting this month with First Wednesday. These’ll be open to the full breadth of Black LGBTQIA+ Austinites as a way to “connect after work or just after a long day,” says their Insta. Self-described writer, tarot reader, and “catalyst” Anraje hosts the event at Southern hospitality hot spot the Dogwood’s Domain locale. Bring your troubles, your joys, and your open heart, and create a little connective tissue with your local Black queer community. – James Scott
Ball of Fire
Wednesday 7, AFS Cinema
AFS Cinema’s Summer Free-for-All – a free series showing off the kind of exemplars of indie, classic, and world cinema that’s AFS’ bread & butter – continues with this screwball comedy from 1941. Gary Cooper plays a nerdy academic studying slang who hits the jackpot with Barbara Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea, a salty nightclub singer with the gift of the gab. Ball of Fire marked the last time the wildly witty Billy Wilder wrote a script (here, with Charles Brackett) that he didn’t direct himself; that task fell to another Golden Age of Hollywood notable, Howard Hawks. Screens in 35mm. – Kimberley Jones
High Noon Talk
Wednesday 7, Bullock Museum
Not all of us have made it to the beach this summer, but the Bullock Museum kind of brings the beach to us with this High Noon Talk. Take a midday break and take in a presentation from Lindsey Savage, Texas Parks and Wildlife’s restoration and artificial reef team lead, who’ll discuss how life in the Gulf of Mexico is being assisted via the Texas Artificial Reef Program. Started in 1990, the program provides hard surfaces for plant and animal species to cling to, which keeps essential life cycles going. Curiosity piqued? Learn more at this free talk. – Kat McNevins
Pride Kickoff Party
Thursday 8, Cheer Up Charlies
On top of June’s nationwide Pride festivities, Austin queers are blessed with two summertime opportunities for celebration. Prior to the official city parade, Cheer Up Charlies teams up with music discovery platform Women That Rock for a stacked showcase of queer, femme, and gender nonconforming musicians. Guitar-slinger Barb specializes in bittersweet indie rock, while singer-songwriter Grace Gardner delivers gut-punch lyrics with a gentle touch. Neo-soul wiz KindKeith is sure to please with dancy recent drop “So Lonely,” as well as throwback psychedelia from The Past Lives. DJ Dragonqueen keeps the good vibes flowing past midnight. – Genevieve Wood
Book Lovers Day Book Exchange
Thursday 8, Blue Owl Brewing
Bibliophiles, start your engines! We know you have a book you’re excited to pass on to its next fan. So bring it on down to the book exchange hosted by the best in sour beer brewing. Whether it’s a beach read, poetry collection, thriller, romance, hot new bestseller, or classic novel, it’s welcome at the table open from 7 to 9pm where you’ll swap it with a new one for yourself. That way you’ll be ready to start a new chapter for Book Lovers Day Aug. 9 – but no one’s stopping you from cracking it open that very night along with a Tiger’s Blood sour and a hummus plate from Blue Owl. – Kat McNevins
Virtual Poetry Reading: Saba Husain
Thursday 8, BookWoman
Every second Thursday of the month, BookWoman hosts a virtual, Zoom-only poetry reading. This month’s features Saba Husain, a Pakistani-American poet from Houston, who will be reading from her debut collection, 2023’s Elegy for My Tongue. “The timeline of colonialism and Partition may seem linear to an outsider, but inhabiting Husain’s poems is to live inside all time at once, to enter a world in which the diaspora is a perspective, a way of making everywhere and nowhere home, of infusing a single moment with all the past and future it carries,” writes Cait Weiss Orcutt of the collection. “Through her eyes, we see Karachi, Mecca, and Katy, Texas as vibratingly alive.” The event will last from 7:15 to 9pm, and Husain’s reading will be followed by an open mic. – Lina Fisher
Stephanie Strange + Joseph Janson
Through Sept. 1, Wally Workman Gallery
You imagine a line and it’s probably straight the way a manufactured ruler is. Yet nature shows lines curved in all manner of ways. Born in 1980 within a 120-year-old house, the Wally Workman Gallery presents two artists whose work engages the myriad manner of lines. In his sculptural work, Joseph Janson utilizes bailing wire to make pieces that “ebb and flow like marks on a page to create recognizable forms: people, animals, and objects such as tables and lamps,” according to the gallery’s description. Stephanie Strange’s graphite drawings are more concerned with making seeable the invisible: communication. “In her work,” the gallery says, “she seeks to express the beauty of how energy is a communication running through all existence.” Both artists use curving lines, but attend this show’s opening reception on Saturday, Aug. 3, to see how they do so in their own materials. – James Scott
The West That Never Was
Through Sept. 7, Davis Gallery & Framing
I first saw Dana Younger’s art at the Blue Genie Bazaar, and even those smaller pieces were enough to make me a forever fan. His sculptures were realistic with slight exaggerations to capture interest, bits and pieces of humans and nature etched in wood and bronze. When placed alongside the popping portrait paintings of partner Felice House, their work becomes even more powerful. House plays with feminist rewritings of history, showing glowing cowgirls and vibrant desert settings, settings where Younger’s comedic cowboys and stately cacti comfortably dwell. A West that never was, but is intensely alluring. – Cat McCarrey
Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.
This article appears in August 2 • 2024.