Culture Flash!

• The Art Palace received some glowing press in The New York Times this week. Fashion writer Cathy Horyn, in a fit of ennui, shot down to Texas in search of a kind of energy and passion that appears to be in short supply in the City That Never Sleeps. And she found some of it in Arturo Palacios' gallery on East Cesar Chavez while being walked through the "Summer Fling" exhibit by the show's curator/painter/aspiring gunslinger, Ali Fitzgerald, who earns a comparison to Calamity Jane from the journalist. Curator Risa Puleo, artists Rebecca Ward and Christa Palazzolo, screenwriter/photographer Bill Wittliff, and architect David Heymann also make appearances in the feature, which has that familiar feel of so many "I discovered Austin" stories but is still a fun read.

• Playwright Dan Dietz and his Americamisfit get a hearing in the nation's capital – at the Kennedy Center, no less – this weekend as part of the Page-to-Stage New Play Festival, in which theatre companies from throughout the region around Washington, D.C., present readings of new works. Dietz's reading is being presented Baltimore theatre Center Stage and the State Theatre of Maryland. Another Austin theatre artist will be spending Labor Day weekend at the festival: Barbara Chisholm (full disclosure: this reporter's wife) is taking time off from the current revival of Keepin' It Weird at Zach to take part in the reading of Baltimore playwright James Magruder's Would That You Were Cold or Hot.