50 Things to See, Hear and Do This Fall

Opens Oct. 12
If you didn't already know they do things big in Texas, you would know it from the ensemble of cultural venues about to debut in a 10-acre park in downtown Dallas. There hasn't been a performing-arts project this ambitious since New York City broke ground on Lincoln Center half a century ago. The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is by Sir Norman Foster, one of the presiding figures of 21st century modernism. The Dee and Charles Wyly Theater is from the renowned architect-polemicist Rem Koolhaas, working in collaboration with Joshua Prince-Ramus. The question is how the center will fare, opening in a year when many arts groups are struggling with the impact of the recession on their box office. In other words: If you build it, will they come?
—Richard Lacayo

See TIME's top 10 museum exhibits of 2008.