Museum With a View
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If It’s Not Baroque, Fix It
Houston Eight years ago Montreal transplant Antoine Plante founded Mercury Baroque with friends at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and the unassuming ensemble has been gaining momentum ever since. Though it is still striving to make a statewide impact, the orchestral group has been applauded by local critics for the range and ambition of its programming, strengths that will be on view as Mercury launches its seventh full season this month. First up for the musicians, who play only period instruments (all the strings, for instance, are made of lamb intestine instead of metal), is Water Music, one of George Frideric Handel’s most famous works. Though beloved for its flute lines and dramatic use of horns, the three-suite piece is best known for the legend behind it: Handel composed Water Music to get back in the good graces of King George I (his former boss), and it was first performed at a party held on a barge that floated along the River Thames. Or so the story goes. It will be complemented by Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les Elements, which begins with a striking overture (appropriately known as “Chaos”) and is meant to represent the elements with its distinct sounds—bass notes signify earth, flute cascades depict water, trilling piccolos stand in for air, and violin passages portray fire. As opening nights go, this one should be especially refreshing. Oct 20. Wortham Theater Center, Cullen Theater, 501 Texas; 713-533-0080; mercurybaroque.org
Things That Make You Go Hmm
Houston Among Bruce Nauman’s best-known works is a curving neon sign that is titled (and reads) The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths. Like nearly all of his highly conceptual sculptures, photographs, and performance pieces, it invokes deep contemplation—or at least a sincere “Huh?” Nauman’s reputation as one of the foremost (and most provocative) contemporary American artists was cemented decades ago, but his innovative creations have retained their shock value. His latest retrospective, “A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960’s,” opening at the Menil Collection this month, pays specific attention to his early years, particularly the period (1964 to 1969) he spent in Northern California, first as an MFA student at the University of California—Davis and then as a young artist coming into his signature style. But it’s his ability to make viewers feel as if they can’t look away fast enough and as if they can’t stop staring that defines his output. Looking at Nauman’s handiwork is slightly maddening. (He has notoriously described his intended effect as such: “Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down.”) Take, for instance, Get Out of My Mind, Get Out of This Room. You enter a small space, and instead of seeing an object, you hear only a recording of Nauman saying—no, growling—the titular phrase over and over until it sounds as if his voice is coming from inside your head. As for visual offerings, those also rack one’s nerves, like the video Wall-Floor Positions, in which you see him pressing his hands and feet against a bare wall for an entire hour (if, that is, you last that long). In fact, you’ll get to see a lot of Nauman’s various body parts, including his neck in the photograph “Neck Pull,” which depicts him doing exactly that, and impressions of his knee in the fiberglass sculpture Six Inches of My Knee Extended to Six Feet. Wordplay is another of his favorite subjects. RAW/WAR, a sketch of those two words intertwined (which would eventually become another of his neon signs), comes with instructions: “Sign to hang when there is a war on.” Consider also the two-ton metal slab that has the word “dark” written on its underside—you’ll never see it, but you know it must be there (at least the curators have verified its existence). With about a hundred pieces on view, this exhibit will likely leave you feeling bemused, infuriated, or something in between. Oct 25—Jan 13. 1515 Sul Ross, 713-525-9400, menil.org
The Stars at Night Are Big and Bright
Fort Davis It’s one thing to lie in your backyard, look up, and find the Big Dipper. It’s quite another to look into a telescope and see galaxies that are millions of light-years away. And there’s no better place to do the latter than at the McDonald Observatory, in the Davis Mountains. This University of Texas at Austin research unit boasts several long-range telescopes, including the Hobby-Eberly, one of the largest and most powerful in the world. The ninety-minute guided tours are more than worth the price of admission, but the stars, as they say, come out at night, so you’ll want to hang around for the Star Party (on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings), at which the guests of honor are the moon, various planets, star clusters, and nebulae. But the biggest draws are the special dinner-and-a-viewing nights, typically held once a month on the Wednesday nearest the full moon and often booked months in advance. You can take your turn peering into the 107-inch Harlan J. Smith, the 82-inch Otto Struve (known as the Grand Old Lady), or a 36-inch (unnamed) telescope as staff members teach you infinite tidbits about space’s celestial bodies. The downside to gazing at these unparalleled wonders, however, is that the Big Dipper will seem small by comparison. Open daily 10—5:30. Frank N. Bash Visitors Center, Tx Hwy 118N; 432-426-3640; mcdonaldobservatory.org
See Ya Later . . .
Beaumont In August Gary Saurage drove fourteen straight hours from Orlando, Florida, with some precious cargo in the back of his minivan: a ten-foot-two, 400-pound Australian saltwater crocodile named Gwendolyn. But the trip didn’t go as smoothly as one would hope a croc relocation would. Once they got to their destination—Saurage, you see, is the owner of Gator Country, an alligator theme park just west of Beaumont—Gwennie slipped out a cracked passenger-side window when no one was looking, which made for several anxious minutes before Saurage and his assistants wrestled the ol’ gal into her new digs. The park is home to more than 130 gators and six crocodiles (and counting), which you can learn all about in the daily educational shows. The main attraction, though, is Big Al, Texas’s largest alligator (in captivity, at least), which is more than thirteen feet long and weighs nearly 1,000 pounds. Brave visitors can hold the babies, feed hot dogs to the larger ones, and watch as handlers take a ride on the Redneck Roller Coaster, a zip line that skims the surface of gator-infested waters. Next spring the park will open a restaurant, surrounded by a moat full of the grinning beauties, that serves Cajun delicacies, including—you guessed it—fried alligator. Open Fri—Sun 10—6. 21159 FM 365, 409-794-9453, gatorcountrytx.com 
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