Hundreds if not thousands of people, hopping gaily or slipping and sliding tipsily from local gallery to gallery and local museum to museum, noshing on free finger-foods, sucking down free booze, and, y’know, maybe looking at art – must be Fall Gallery Night, an annual event now in its 31st year and easily the biggest citywide party night Fort Worth has ever had.
My advice, specifically for couples: Travel in small groups, preferably of other couples or close mutual friends. The last thing any significant other wants, after having a few cold ones, is to be left alone with his or her partner in the presence of art – bickering over, say, color theory’s relevance to installation pieces or cinema’s (deleterious? necessary?) influence on contemporary painting. Such discussions all too often lead to someone’s spending the night on the couch. In a group setting, you can always count on some sort of distraction to preclude heated debate between loved ones. Just my two cents.
Anyway, on Saturday, a couple dozen local galleries, museums, and other exhibition spaces will open their doors to the unwashed, starting at 6 p.m. and, depending on the locality, wrapping up around 10 or 11 p.m., giving revelers just enough time to hit nearby bars for last call. Participating spaces include Artspace 111, Edmund Craig Gallery, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Gallery 414, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, William Campbell Contemporary Art, and many more.
Here’s some heads-up based on past Gallery Night experiences. Haute Fort Worth and the young, fashionable descendants thereof typically hang out at a couple places, most notably Bill Campbell’s (4935 Byers Ave., in Arlington Heights) and 111 (111 Hampton St., downtown). At 111, you’ll also some young, ragged bohemians, and the place is much larger than Bill Campbell’s. Actually, Artspace 111 is probably the most spacious gallery around.
For edgy stuff and vibes geared more toward the bohos, Studio 5 (1018 W. Shaw St.) will feature new, adventurous work by Greg Bahr, Christopher Blay (a former Weekly critic’s choice for best visual artist), Jill Foley, Jesse Sierra Hernandez, and the intriguingly named Pussyhouse Propaganda.
The party, incidentally, gets started the night before. On Friday around happy hour on the South Side, Fort Worth South Inc. presents Arts Goggle, an evening when Southside bars and clubs get busy early and when Southside retailers stay open past normal business hours and effectively transform themselves into music venues and art galleries – and places to score some cheap and/or free hooch. Check out www.fortworthsouth.org.
