Beat the heat, bust out the hula hoop, build sandcastles and create sand art to take home, and bid summer adieu at this all-ages event.

DAC Nights: Sea You Later, Summer

The Radiant Tarot is a multimedia dance interpretation of the tarot deck The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to Creativity, the spectacular show directed and produced by dancer and choreographer Myra Krien, and featuring performances by the Mosaic Dance Company, the Starbelly Dancers, and Drake Von Trapp.

Invaders of the Heart: The Radiant Tarot

Austin's own Sea Legs dance company explores the phenomenon of making new friends. Through movement narratives, dancers tell stories of strength, humor, and the risk it takes to start a new connection.

Make New Friends

In this latest iteration of the series, DAC Nights explores the realm of memory. Create a work of art from discarded toys, jewelry, and more. Test your memory skills to win prizes. Exchange your memorial creations with others and build new memories with fellow participants.

DAC Nights: Do You Remember?

Here's a stunning array of images by Patrick O’Brien (AKA the 3-Eyed man), who captures stationary objects via a camera in motion, utilizing the lens as a brush and the subject as paint. Also on display: "Condo" by Ed Barr; "The Year of the Pandemic" by Mary Day Long.

Butridge Gallery: Abstract To Alien

Join Future Front Texas and the Front Market for a candid, hands-on conversation on the world of art markets and craft fairs and a look at best practices for picking shows and popping up – from booth set-up to marketing tips to planning templates.

Future Front Texas: Art Markets 101

Future Front Texas: Markets 101

Jacob Guzman depicts people of color and aspects of daily inner-city working class struggles, inspired by his personal experiences and resistance to stereotypes and comparisons,

Butridge Gallery: Boxed In

Head over to the Julia C. Butridge Gallery for the artist reception for "Access" by Neal Flynn, "The Parallax Project" by Zoe Pettit, and "Boxed In" by Jacob Guzman.

DAC: Triple Show Artists' Reception

In preparation for Friday's solar eclipse, come to the Dougherty Arts Center tonight and build your own eclipse viewing kit. Learn about eclipse glasses and pinhole viewers to construct your own safe means of viewing the rare celestial event.

DAC Nights: Total Eclipse of the Art

Dougherty presents an inclusive story time with picture books selected to engage young artists, including The Dark, Boo Stew, and Crickwing.

Dougherty Story Hour

Jacob Guzman depicts people of color and aspects of daily inner-city working-class struggles, inspired by his personal experiences and resistance to stereotypes and comparisons,

Salvador Rodriguez paints the magnificence of the deserts of Texas and beyond, taking months and years of work – including detailed research of the ecosystems, history, and myths of each environment,  to recreate their essence with stunning realism.

Butridge Gallery: Senderos del Desierto II

Dougherty staff and volunteers will read stories selected to engage young artists, with inclusive opportunities for listeners to discuss topics covered and socialize.

Witness, for your delight, Neal Flynn’s exhibition of mostly new assemblage, collage, and site-specific intervention exploring ideas relating to nostalgia, loss, violence, ownership, and modern Western culture.

Butridge Gallery: Access

This workshop led by Gabriela Kane and Chris Kiley frames the advocacy role creative communities can play at the state and local levels. This is an opportunity to learn how to speak with elected officials, protect resources, and get involved with arts advocacy.

Speak Truth to Power: Creativity, Advocacy, and Our Collective Future

Learn how to navigate tension and uncertainty at a workshop using improv techniques and exercises.

Improv for Building a Resilient Mindset

Here's Austin's premiere event of puppetry for adult audiences, brought to life by Glass Half Full and Trouble Puppet Theatre, and now in its 14th year! Local artists collaborate to create short pieces for this annual showcase, using a variety of puppetry techniques including shadow, hand and rod, tabletop, object, and physical theatre. It's two nights of naughty, heartbreaking, harrowing, hilarious, and always original stories, presented through the medium of animated objects.

Austin Puppet Incident

Salvador Rodriguez paints the magnificence of the deserts of Texas and beyond, taking months and years of work – including detailed research of the ecosystems, history, and myths of each environment, to re-create their essence with stunning realism.

The Star Bandits present a showcase of six original short plays by Austin playwrights: Hang Man by Marcus Delzell; Treachery by Sarah Waddle; Do They Know We're Suffering? by Dalton Anderson; Attachment Theory by Juneid Mosaheb; Robin Hood vs. Dracula by Robbie Bland; and One Man Play by Max Freed.

Stargaze Theater Festival

An inclusive, all-ages storytime to engage young artists, featuring the books Frederick, The Shortest Day, and The Insomniacs.

Take in a screening of the 2020 documentary, The Booksellers, that explores the world of rare book collectors and dealers in New York. The DAC will also have have a collection of regular, not-rare books ready for swapping, so bring your own to spread the love of reading and holidays!

DAC Nights: The Booksellers and Book Swap

Join Austin Russian Theater for a play about the villainous Baba Yaga and Cat Bayun, who transform into Father Frost and the Snow Maiden, seize power in the forest, and receive all the New Year's gifts. Play will be performed in Russian, and is great for kids ages 2 and up.

New Year in Reverse

Unleash your inner artist at this celebration of art, community, and innovation. Dougherty is reinventing its programming, and invites guests to provide valuable feedback while enjoying hands-on art activities such as weaving, collage, and prototyping whether you're a seasoned artist or a first-time doodler.

Art Jam: Reinvent & Reconnect

This year-ender of a show is the cumulative exhibition of the Dougherty Arts Center’s visual artists in residence: Chelsea Biggerstaff, Gabriella Blasquez, Veronica Christianson, and Ali Rex.

Butridge Gallery: Process and ReProcess

This collection of paintings by Alexandra Abbott explores a secret, magic world existing within the ordinary. Observe the voluptuous curves of a flower, the movement of clouds across a desert landscape, insects steadily and silently working, rock walls stacked by hands hundreds of years ago, and things so quiet they are hardly noticed.

Butridge Gallery: Finding Wholeness

From Texas Comedies – the company that brought us Murders & Moontowers, Boomtown, Prohibition, and other staged follies – comes this latest spectacle inspired by the notorious Sutton-Taylor Feud, the longest-lasting and deadliest feud in 19th-century Texas.

The Feud: A Musical Comedy

This exhibition offers a unique perspective on how our relationships with the natural world can serve as a conduit to a deeper understanding of the ethereal, revealing the subtle magic when nature and spirit intertwine. Featuring works by Rebecca Bennett, Leslie Kell, and Elena Lipkowski.

Thin Spaces: Seeking Nature’s Ethereal Conduits

This three-person show of visual art at the venerable Dougherty Arts Center suggests ways in which “the natural world can serve as a conduit to a deeper understanding of the ethereal,” divulging liminal places where material and spirit intertwine. Local and simultaneously beyond locale, the layered oil abstractions of Rebecca Bennett, the stunningly manipulated photography of Leslie Kell, and Elena Lipkowski’s digital collages embellished with hand-stitched embroidery shift the gallery’s walls toward wonder and may open your doors of perception into a realm that’s downright seelie. Bonus: Meet the artists there tonight, 7-9pm. – Wayne Alan Brenner

One of the greatest decades, the Nineties gave us grunge, Seinfeld, Beanie Babies, millennials, and so much more. Celebrate the late 20th century at an arty party where you’ll make your own slime, taste some fave Nineties sweet treats at the candy bar, and make a contribution to the splatter paint graffiti wall. There will undoubtedly be a soundtrack of killer jams, and feel free to bust out your flannels and Docs or overalls with one strap hanging loose if you’re feeling especially nostalgic. – Kat McNevins

Mad Splatter Party

Spring has sprung, and even though April showers bring May flowers, we already have the blessing of bountiful bluebonnets and wonderful wildflowers lining the highways. Celebrate flowers of all forms at this arty party experimenting with several approaches to flower dyes. BYO T-shirt for a tie-dye, explore dye drawings, and try what Dougherty proclaims is best of all: flower crushing. More flower to ya! – Kat McNevins

DAC Nights: Flower Power

What’s cool about collage is how an artist can repurpose things and give them new life and meaning simply by placing them next to other things. So many small choices make up the whole: type of material, size, shape, color; what to include and what to leave out. At this talk, learn more about the process, inspiration, and techniques of two local creatives whose work requires this type of consideration: queer Mexican American artist and ACC assistant prof Bernie Diaz, and Katie Conley, whose postage stamp collage exhibit, “Parts to Whole,” is on view now at DAC. – Kat McNevins

Artist Talk With Bernie Diaz & Katie Conley

DAC is getting in on the Pride festivities with a night devoted to the humble zine, which they point out is an art form rooted in queer history and self expression. They’ll have supplies on hand to craft your own, but you’re welcome to bring your own materials as well. Sherwood Forest Zine Library will bring some LGBTQ+ zines to offer some inspiration, and teaching artists will be available to help craft the perfect project to exchange with other creators. – Kat McNevins

DAC Nights: Behind the Zines

The impeccably named MuthaGoose is the collective brainchild of artists Jill Garcia and Kim Phu. They are two of the baddest muthas around, debuting their collaborative creativity with the sly, wry, “Luster Woo” exhibit at the Butridge Gallery in the Dougherty Arts Center. Both are well-versed in playing around with mediums, crafting sculptures and paintings created from all manner of found or upcycled items. For “Luster Woo,” MuthaGoose present their nostalgic-but-modern takes on women’s issues. On Wednesday, Jill Garcia will be present for the artist reception, answering questions about the duo’s process. Check out these indelible visuals highlighting how the more things change, the more things stay the same. – Cat McCarrey

“Luster Woo” by MuthaGoose

Save the date for the Alexa Torres quartet debut album release on Saturday June, 15th at the Dougherty Arts Center. Doors open at 7:00, music starts at 7:30. In Situ is a jazz violin album that features both original compositions and arrangements of jazz standards, foregrounding improvisation throughout. This free concert is presented by Alexa Torres and the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center and is supported by the Austin Live Music Event Fund. To create the album, Torres drew inspiration from her Cuban heritage and her time participating in a geographical diversity of jazz scenes within the US, Europe, and Latin America. If you like modern jazz, Latinx jazz, improvisation, the violin, or just good live music, you won't want to miss this concert! Reserve tickets via EventBrite.

Alexa Torres Quartet (album release)

With crochet being a hot girl hobby now, it’s clear the textile arts are no longer – maybe never were? – just a household chore. Mending clothing with patchwork or darning not only strengthens, but also adds adornment and interest to an otherwise basic piece. Plus, Dougherty Arts Center says, quoting queer publication them., “needlepoint is likely the campiest art form in human history.” This Wednesday, DAC’s Cidnye Stott teaches a mending class à la Pride Month, “queering the idea of fabric and thread itself … Textile Arts have a deep thread interwoven with Queer history, from challenging gendered connotations to demanding visibility from those around them.” The event is free, and though you’re recommended to bring your own supplies, DAC will have some on hand. – Lina Fisher