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G ormley on High: It's the heart of the fall art season, and our cup runneth over. Begin at Nasher Sculpture Center where eagerly awaited new director Carlos Basualdo has taken the reins, arriving in Dallas from a vaunted post as deputy director and chief curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Talk about a welcome wagon: "Survey: Antony Gormley," organized by Nasher chief curator Jed Morse with curatorial assistant Sydney Smith, marks a milestone. Gormley, a 1994 Turner Prize winner who has been anointed with an OBE, is among the most widely exhibited post-war sculptors in Europe. Yet the artist has never before had an American museum retrospective. His humanistic forms, spanning five decades, take over the Nasher inside and out and spill over to the Dallas Arts District. These works literally "leap" to the top of tall buildings: Sculptures are placed on rooftops of surrounding structures in dialogue with the skyline. Also highlighted will be the artist's revealing sketchbooks. More than 180 are installed in the museum's lower gallery, adjoining models for both proposed and completed projects worldwide, including the monumental Angel of the North, 1998, that holds court on a hillside in Gateshead, England (through January 4, 2026). Surreal Season: At Kirk Hopper Fine Art, a duo of shows curated by art historian/author Susie Kalil mirror our age of uncertainty. "Lynn Randolph: Dark Revelations" is a cosmic portal to a hallucinatory future spun out by the 86-year- old Houston painter who was one of the founding artists of the mythic Lawndale, as well as feminist who helped launch the Houston chapter of NOW (through October 11). Kalil writes of Randolph's work, "The paintings of 'Dark Revelations' give rise to moments of unforetold horror and ravishing beauty. Randolph has produced a series unlike others, strange and profound." Then Annabel Livermore takes the stage in "Cosmic Gardens," the final exhibition and catalog approved by the late artist James Magee (of The Hill renown) for his feminine alter ego (October 18 – November 15). Livermore's evocative, transcendentalist oil on board paintings have been compared t o t h e w o r k o f visionary talents William Blake, Hilma Af Klint, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Kalil writes, "At the core of her art is that sphere of human existence inhabited by the marginal experiences of dream, imagination, and memory." Walk This Way + Vignette Rises: Two stellar opportunities for art gazing and acquiring are musts. Vignette Art Fair, now in its seventh edition, focuses on female talents; indie curator Maggie Adler, well known for her decade-plus at the Amon Carter, was tapped as juror. Adler culled 104 works by 55 women artists, selected from 224 submissions that span the state (October 2 – 4, at On the Levee, Dallas Design District, info texasvignette.org). With all proceeds going directly to the artists, Vignette signifies a novel and exciting approach to a fair. Emerging talents to well-known artists are among the lineup including Dallas collage queen Ellen Frances Tuchman and Houston-based photography professor/ Guggenheim Fellow Keliy Anderson- Staley of the luminous 19th-century-inspired tintype portraits … Save Saturday, October 25, for ArtWalk | West 2025 + Wild West Mural Festival, which transpires in that outpost of cool —West Dallas Tin District, showcasing 75-plus artists, four galleries, and tons of aerosol action (artwalkwest.com). Best bets: The studios of Dan Lam, Jeremy Biggers, and collaborators Will Heron and Andrea Guay; gallerists Ro2 Art and newly minted ArtFuss; and the walls of muralist Lauren Lewchuk. Pool Party: We're perennially obsessed with the collage creations of San Antonio- based Kelly O'Connor. The artist's latest, riffing upon the image-making of the great Slim Aarons — think blue bloods at cool pools — serve as inspiration for O'Connor's feminist, retro image-making at Conduit Gallery in "Plunge Pools" (October 11 – November 15). © ANTONY GORMLEY. PHOTO BY ANTONY GORMLEY. COURTESY THE ARTIST. Antony Gormley's Field, 1984-1985, at Nasher Sculpture Center Kelly O'Connor's Plunge Pool: Slim Aarons Poolside Chez Holder, Albin Holder's home in Palm Beach, FL May 1970, 2025, at Conduit Gallery Art Notes By Catherine D. Anspon 58