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The Blanton is relaunching Second Saturdays with the new Blanton All Day series, with extended hours and alternating to Sundays when Texas Football has a Saturday home game. First up: Sunday’s celebration of brand-new exhibition “Long Live Surrealism! 1924–Today.” Activities include “Drawing to See” sketching, kid-friendly storytime and cardmaking, guided small tours called “Looking Together” that emphasize “making meaning in response to works of art,” live music, and more. After a full day ingesting art, purchase food and drink on-site, or bring your own, to cap the day with a picnic on the Blanton’s lovely grounds. – Kimberley Jones

You want comedy, but you don’t want to be subject to the capricious whims of fate – as is common in the devil’s art form, aka improv comedy. Fallout Theater has heard your cries, so they gathered the best in the Austin biz for a three-day celebration of scripted comedy. From early access to works-in-progress to one-person shows, sketches to film, Hacksfest is all killer, no filler. Current lineup heavies include Austin Mime & Movement Co., Daddy Strong Legs, Technically Music!, Trisha, and many more – including acts yet to be announced. After you experience this weekend of written humor, you’ll be shouting from the rooftops: “ALL HAIL LOCAL SCRIPTED COMEDY!” – James Scott

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

There was a time, not so long ago, when science was seen as entertainment. No, not Ancient Greece when philosophers would turn experiments into public spectacle, or the Victorian era when lectures on new theories would fill auditoriums. It was the 1990s, when everyone owned a copy of A Brief History of Time on their nightstand, quarks were cool, and Tom Stoppard could write a play about chaos theory and the heat death of the universe, and it would be universally regarded as one of the greatest works of 20th century drama. Eros and Thanatos push and pull in this poetic tale of love and research. – Richard Whittaker

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.

Owner, director, and master printer of Flatbed Press, Katherine Brimberry wears many hats. On top of all these hats is her artist hat, which you’ll be hard “pressed” to ignore once you’ve enjoyed her newest exhibit of prints and mixed media works. “Chronicles: A Retrospective” shows off Brimberry’s cornerstone status in Texas printmaking, with gorgeous landscapes and intriguing visuals abounding. From her own artist statement: “When I place found objects into visual relationships with landscape details,: I intend to create an enigma. The viewer, who without the benefit of the history of the objects, is presented this mystery and can find and assign meaning. My underlying intention is creating images that spark epiphany about time and space, life and death, past and future.” Check out the show’s opening on Sat., Aug. 24, and see a retrospective of Brimberry’s collaborative pieces over at St. Edward’s Fine Arts Gallery on Aug. 30. – James Scott

Utilizing collected materials – recycled clay, lumber, thrift store blankies – queer Texan Anthony Sonnenberg’s new show uses not only installed art pieces but performance. Makes sense, given that the queerness Sonnenberg explores here holds space in both stillness and movement. Consider his acknowledged muses, Divine and André Leon Talley, both of whom were striking in still images and awe-inspiring in motion. The event copy extrapolates: “These, and other creatives like them, stood out for their ability to defy traditional beauty standards, becoming fashion icons for their completely unique, uncompromising style, and their outsized impacts on the worlds of fashion, film, music, and pop culture.” Enjoy the opening reception festivities on Aug. 23, or check in any Saturday through Oct. 5. – James Scott

Art is communal, stronger when visions are shared. ICOSA already showcases the connections between Austin artists on the regular, but with “Straight Like That” the web grows to include the Houston-based Throughline Collective. With a selection curated by Mueni Loko Rudd, a Kenyan American curator and preservationist dedicated to expanding the cultural landscape of art, visitors to ICOSA’s latest show can witness a vibrant exhibit of Texas-based artists pushing the boundaries of what is expected from art. The pieces vary in form and theme. But all evoke new insights into what Texas art can be. – Cat McCarrey

Art and music? Name a more iconic duo. For this exhibit, a dozen local artists created pieces inspired by a song, musician, or style of music associated with the Lone Star State. Influences could range from Selena to Willie to Beyoncé, from Houston rap to Tejano to blues. Come see what inspired participating artists Amitai Plasse, Billy Ray Mangham, Carl Block, Denise Elliott Jones, Greg Barton, Jess Wade, Jamie Lea Wade, Karen Woodward, Liz Potter, B Shawn Cox, Sylvia Troconis, and TVHeadATX. – Kat McNevins

That's right: Cap City Comedy Club, the longtime cornerstone of Austin's comedy scene for nearly four decades is at a new venue in the Domain. And here's Valerie Lopez with a closer look at what's in store for the scene via the venue. Click for details!

The California-based artist, known for combining visual art and industrial design, uses media including photography, sculpture, simple machines, and more to explore both the art world and corporate culture and other themes during this exhibition’s six-decade span. While tackling often serious subject matter, Cheng’s work retains a sense of playfulness on display at the Jones Center. Get a first look of the collection at the public opening reception Friday at 6pm. – James Renovitch

Ever topical, Ivester Contemporary’s September Project Space show centers around memory and home – concepts apt for the seasonal change to cooler weather. This exhibit, “Echoes of Home: Relational Memories and Urban Futures” by Occupy Vacancy, a public art initiative based in St. Louis, is its first ever within a gallery context. Usually the artists, Brianna McIntyre and André Fuqua, transform vacant lots into neighborhood-specific installations “that contemplate St. Louis’s vernacular architecture, settlement history, and blight within the city’s Northside,” reads the exhibition text. “Echoes of Home” similarly uses architectural elements and aspects of the urban landscape, but within a gallery context, inviting Austinites to reflect on our own complicated and rapidly changing urban landscape. – Lina Fisher

“I live to have my mind turned inside out.” So says curator and artist in her own right Alyssa Taylor Wendt. She’s gathered a slew of art to do just that – wrinkle your brain, shed new light, and yes, maybe even lead to your own epiphanies. The collection pushes borders, featuring work that spins through the eyes and mind like those magic-eye books for kids. Every piece takes a slight skew on familiar topics. It might be a new take on a pattern. Or an unexpected use of color. Or a sculpture with a detail that just pops. Somehow, somewhere, something will reveal itself. It’s just a matter of whether you’re looking closely enough. – Cat McCarrey

Many have tried to reveal the darkness behind our most beloved fairy tales, but few did it better than Stephen Sondheim. The first act plays straight, as familiar faces like Jack and his Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood seek new lives. The second act shows the truth behind the old adage: Be careful what you wish for. It’s an incredible depth of story, accompanied by the always-interesting musical turns of a Sondheim score. Things fall apart, they’re rebuilt, and everyone’s changed in the end. Enjoy your travel into these wild woods while learning that fairy-tale life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. – Cat McCarrey

A fox peers through purple foliage. Coyotes wear bright flowers as camouflage. A bear wanders among California tiger lilies spotted by vibrant green dots. These are a few of the creatures who inhabit Julia Lucey’s painted worlds – all of them wildlife in increasingly unfamiliar spaces. Lucey utilizes traditional aquatint etchings to communicate the man-made strangeness being visited upon our natural world, with the effect mirroring “a visual tableau much like the European tapestries of the 17th Century,” as the event copy states. But these works are more than beautiful: They ask the viewer to contemplate their own place in the paving over of other animals’ habitats. – James Scott

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.

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.

Ceci n’est pas une exposition d’art: 100 years since its inception, and Surrealism is still getting under our skin with its dream illogic and witty non sequiturs. Featured artists include Hans Bellmer, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Wifredo Lam, Man Ray, and Dorothea Tanning.

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.

The best science fiction takes on current fears and hopes and imagines them differently. There’s always some recognizable thread that ties it to our own experience. Aryel René Jackson has mastered that with their art, tackling current social and racial narratives to create a visual future that might just happen. Using videos, and work created for past films, the Ivester presents Jackson’s world – a world ripe with colors and textures, forms that could be humans, situations that could occur in a more evolved society. Slightly spacey, slightly familiar, this exhibit is a feast for the eyes and the soul. It’s impossible to leave without reflecting on where we could be better. – Cat McCarrey

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

Making puppets “mature” is no new phenomenon (see: Avenue Q, or that terrible Melissa McCarthy movie, The Happytime Murders – sorry for reminding you of that film’s existence). But most content struggles to move beyond “Hey, isn’t it sooo funny that puppets are having sex and swearing?” It takes a special work to make the puppets an essential part of the theme, but with Sunny Days, Reina Hardy moves past novelty and toward intense introspection. Named for the iconic Sesame Street theme song, Hardy takes the gentle, educational approach of that classic property to explain her not-so-fictional world ravaged by political unrest and climate change. The puppets are an integral part of the story. They’re needed for this unmissable call to action told with hilarity, heartbreak, and hand puppets. – Cat McCarrey

The diverse lineup of hilarious, always surprising improv shows continues, with Pgraph and Maestro and the Big Bash and more, for the most unexpected delights of in-person entertainment.

Initially dubbed the “gay-related immune deficiency” and even the “gay plague,” AIDS caused a deep and lasting impact on the gay community that echoes through to today. Austin Rainbow Theatre tackles that legacy with a production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, directed by Christopher Preslar with performers including Adrian Lancaster, Dax Dobbs, and Lamont Lofton. An early Eighties setting backgrounds this drama that “explores themes of community, identity, and the struggle for recognition and equality,” according to ART. Catch the opening night performance on Friday, Sept. 6, and reflect on all that came before – as well as what must come next. – James Scott

Reenter the world of “all for one and one for all” with this collaboration between the Archive Theater and Austin Scottish Rite Theater. It may have been a while since you’ve seen any of the movie adaptations of Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale, but witnessing the swashbuckling adventures of D’Artagnan and his trio of mentors live onstage is a much better way to revisit these fearless Frenchmen. Archive specializes in taking classic stories from page to stage. In their hands, the musketeers are sure to be spellbinding. Besides, any excuse to see a show at the gorgeous and historic Scottish Rite is a good one. – Cat McCarrey

Time to upgrade from your Ansel Adams wall calendar and instead appreciate the legendary landscape photographer’s black & white pictures of the American West where they belong – on a gallery wall.