Henrietta Milan, right, of Milan Gallery, argues technique with a would-be artiste.

Readers’ choice: Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival

Staff choice: Fort Worth Symphony Concerts in the Garden

The Fort Worth Symphony’s annual June outing in the Botanical Garden draws a big, loyal following that munches on picnic goodies, listens to the music, and gasps at the impressive fireworks each night. The only thing missing is an acoustical shell to enhance the orchestra’s sound. Any donors around?

Readers’ choice: Gallery Night

Staff choice: Print Research Institute of North Texas: Selections from the Permanent Collection, at Gallery 414

Collages, prints of ab-ex paintings, pure text, and original woodcuts were just some of the myriad styles on display this past winter at Gallery 414’s P.R.I.N.T. exhibit. As engaging as the most accomplished painting and as memorable as the best graphic design, nearly every work in this group show startled equally as a historical document and the result of inspired genius. Notable pieces included Terry Allen’s ghostly etchings, Jaune Quick-to-see Smith’s absurdist collages, and Sally French’s paint-puking rabbit.

Readers’ choice: Dali 100 Years, Fort Worth Community Arts Center

Staff choice: One Million + Kingdoms, by Pierre Huyghe, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Aside from the repetitive Joan Mitchell retrospective, pretty much everything the Modern slapped on its walls this year was — as usual — world-class and worthy of a million “Best of” mantles. But we’re gonna go with the Huyghe exhibit, plainly for its contemporary feel. One Million + Kingdoms consisted merely of three video projects, each concerned with that gray space where the narrative of real life intersects that of cinema. Kudos to associate curator Andrea Karnes for her progressive taste and deft presentation. Taking in this exhibit only makes you wish that the Modern would dedicate more space and time to more hot living artists, such as this French master.

Readers’ choice: Jubilee Theater, 506 Main St, FW

Staff choice: Modern at the Modern

For classical music fans who want to hear something other than the 12,655th performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, this series put on jointly by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Cliburn Concerts occasioned rousing performances of accessible music by the likes of Lowell Liebermann, William Bolcom, and Ricky Ian Gordon. Next year’s series boasts concerts devoted to Ned Rorem and Osvaldo Golijov. Of all the local venues for classical music, this is the freshest and most exciting.

Readers’ choice: Art Camp, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St

Readers’ choice: Rudy Eastman, Jubilee Theater

Staff choice: Ann Koonsman, recently retired executive director of the Fort Worth Symphony

A posterperson for the job, Koonsman came up through the ranks of the Fort Worth school district’s string program (now defunct), joined the orchestra as a violinist, went into administration, and gingerly straddled the line between musicians’ needs and those of the organization. She saw the orchestra’s budget expand to $11 million this year, with a 52-week schedule and a dynamic young conductor, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, leading the group. Koonsman can look back at a job superbly done.

Readers’ choice: Coffee House Gallery, 609 S Jennings Av, FW

Staff choice: Gallery 414, 414 Templeton Dr, FW

It’s been a banner year for the nonprofit Gallery 414. The gallery’s lone miss (that dreadful exercise in function-less furniture design, One Vacant Chair) still can’t take away from its various many-splendored successes, most notably John Frost’s solo exhibit and P.R.I.N.T.’s group show. Kudos to Adele Krause and John Hartley for running such a fine, tight ship.

Readers’ choice: Randy Bacon

Staff choice: John Hartley

John Currin ain’t got nuthin’ on this guy. The renowned postmodern classicist may be full of more subversive ideas than Hartley, but his brush doesn’t move any lighter, faster, or more deftly. That Hartley’s now getting the recognition he deserves proves that a cultural awakening is happening. Painting never went away. It’s just that in this era of vapidity, people are starting to realize the medium’s intellectual worth. Hartley — like Currin, Essenhigh, and Yuskavage — is leading the charge.

Readers’ choice: Bruce Wood Dance Company

Staff choice: Metropolitan Classical Ballet (formerly Ballet Arlington)

While Texas Ballet Theater pulled itself together under Ben Stevenson’s direction with big-time shows, and Bruce Wood Dance Company continued to impress with the original choreography of its namesake, Metropolitan Classical Ballet reached new levels of local excellence this season, combining top-quality productions with brilliant dancing. Spartacus, Firebird, and Eight by Adler were recent highlights, all spelling class.

Readers’ choice: (tie) Four Day Weekend and Artisan Center Theatre

Staff choice: Circle Theatre

While we didn’t always give raves to Circle Theatre over the past year, the venerable Sundance Square company was more reliable than ever in working with the area’s top actors and directors. And the choice of material, largely by founding director Ann L. Rhodes and current artistic director Rose Pearson, was a model of freshness, variety, and (gasp!) appreciation of audience tastes and intelligence. There were no less than three Southwest premieres — the urban thriller Desperate Affection, the publishing satire Naked by the River, and the loopy family dramedy Moon Over the Brewery. Throw in a period romantic comedy (Talley’s Folly) and a serious-minded glimpse of Protestant politics (God’s Man in Texas), and you had a thrilling parade of ideas and characters treading that small stage.

Readers’ choice: Jerry Russell

Staff choice: Lee Trull, The Shape of Things, Stage West

Fêted misanthrope Neil LaBute helmed a flabby screen version of his play The Shape of Things. It took Stage West and director Jim Covault to tighten up LaBute’s predictably cynical screed about the power dynamics in romance. The show wouldn’t have been so bracing without Lee Trull in the pivotal role of Adam, an unsuspecting Eliza Doolittle who undergoes a dramatic emotional and physical transformation under the callous machinations of art student Eve (Dana Schultes), who was less Henry Higgins than Dr. Frankenstein. Trull managed to project fractured confidence and intelligence at the same time, and the subtle changes in posture and body language that he navigated through the show worked better than the priciest makeup or costumes ever could.

Readers’ choice: Dana Schultes

Staff choice:(tie) Evette Perry-Buchanan and Eleanor T. Threatt, Woman from the Town, Jubilee Theater

Evette Perry-Buchanan and Eleanor T. Threatt dazzled in Jubilee’s ‘Woman From The Town.’

It’s impossible to think of Jubilee’s engrossing production of the melodrama Woman from the Town minus the lead performances of either Evette Perry-Buchanan or Eleanor T. Threatt. As middle-aged sisters with souls rotten from poverty and hard labor, Perry-Buchanan and Threatt gave heartbreaking and funny performances that relied on great, pitiless resources of bile. Perry-Buchanan was the luckless inheritor of the desiccated family farm, proud of her stony refusal to forgive, forget, and enjoy affection. Threatt played the scorned runaway whose real estate success was fueled by dreams of revenge and bottomless materialism. This pair dramatized pretty much everything about the perils of capitalism, from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Readers’ choice: David and Goliath (Cornerstone Theater)

Staff choice: Rhythm: A Musical Myth, Jubilee Theater

Between the Joe Rogers-conducted live band and a stellar corps of actor-singers, Jubilee Theater has never had to prove its harmonic chops to anyone. The plots and dialogue in the company’s original musical productions, however, have too often hit sour notes. All the stars were aligned with Rhythm: A Musical Myth, Rogers and writer-director Rudy Eastman’s epic comic take on world mythology and fallible humanity. Con artists and epic heroes wrangled with Indian, Greek, and Egyptian gods as well as Mother Nature over a little red box full of troubles. As a cosmic romp, Rhythm looked great, sounded even better, and best of all, made sense dramaturgically.

Readers’ choice: Stomp

Staff choice: Urinetown

For everyone who loves New York. For everyone who hates New York. For everyone who loves musicals. For everyone who’s overdosed on the Cameron Mackintosh/Andrew Lloyd Webber school of overstuffed musicals and thinks satire is the perfect cure for that. And for everyone who giggles at the thought of the government charging people to pee.

Readers’ choice: Josh Groban

Staff choice: Krystian Zimerman

The always urbane, discriminating Polish pianist dazzled Bass Hall once again with his renditions of Chopin and some rarities by compatriot Leopold Godowsky, a pianist and composer whose monstrous technical gifts and idiosyncratic vision were beyond his contemporaries. Honorable mention to Olga Kern’s performance of Rachmaninov with Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, a prelude to her triumphant recital in Carnegie Hall.

Readers’ choice: Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s Elijah

Staff choice: The Turn of the Screw at Fort Worth Opera; Dorian at UNT

How refreshing to hear new operas! At Fort Worth Opera, a troupe too long wedded to stale retreads of the Italian and German repertoire, the queasily alluring sounds of Benjamin Britten’s setting of Henry James’ ghost story were thrilling to hear. That goes equally for UNT’s world premiere of an unearthed score by Hans Schaeuble set to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Readers’ choice: Words That Stick by Rix Quinn

Staff choice: Texas Literary Outlaws — Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond, by Stephen L. Davis

Davis isn’t a North Texas author (he’s from San Marcos) but his publisher is close enough to make him guilty by association. Besides, his book is a no-holds-barred account of the personal and writing lives of some of Fort Worth’s most famous (infamous?) authors, including Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake, and Gary Cartwright, all of whom cut their writing teeth at the old Fort Worth Press, as well as fellow Mad Dogs from West Texas, Dallas, and Austin — Larry L. King, Peter Gent, and Billy Lee Brammer. Davis, assistant curator of the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University at San Marcos, has produced a damn good, often hilarious, often sad, but always very readable account of the fabulous, tragic, creative, drug-drenched, politically charged 1960s and the six writers who galloped full-speed (and in this case “speed” does have a double meaning) into that decade and changed Texas letters forever. Read Davis’ book, and you’ll be searching Amazon.com for these guys’ titles.

Readers’ choice: James M. Johnston

Staff choice: Jon Keeyes

As far as reputations go, Jon Keeyes (American Nightmare, Hallow’s End, this year’s Suburban Nightmare) has a good big one among video store moguls. He’s doing what he loves, and — as a go-to guy for 90 minutes’ worth of big boobs, bad humor, and murderous rampages — the writer-director is making enough scratch to get by. (Earning a living by making movies in Fort Worth is reason alone for an award.) Keeyes’ production company (Highland Myst Productions) always keeps “six pans on the fire, trying to get one of them to cook,” and, for any potential investors who might be reading, his track record shows that he’s always stayed out of the red — not counting the gallons of fake blood.

Staff choice: Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering

This annual fall event centered on the Stockyards has a little bit of everything — and many of the most authentic cowboy activities that go on in Fort Worth these days. From a trail ride (with cowboy dress code, no less) to cowboy poetry and music, a chuckwagon cooking competition, and ranch rodeo and cutting horse events, the Gathering (and Western Swing Festival) offers a way to appreciate today’s ranch hands and western artists, as well as to revisit the best of the past.

Staff choice: Olga Pavlova and Alexander Vetrov

Pavlova and Vetrov performed the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake on the Metropolitan Classical Ballet holiday program last December and showed us what the Bolshoi tradition of bravura dancing is all about. Sharp attacks, effortless turns, and dazzling leaps were all there, along with a sense of style that often eludes non-Russian performers.

Readers’ choice: Stomp

Staff choice: (tie) Texas Ballet Theater for Peer Gynt, Metropolitan Classical Ballet Holiday Program

Ben Stevenson’s Peer Gynt, a dark, brooding look at a non-hero, uses dance for storytelling and character development. The ballet unfolds like a play, with moving emotional scenes and fantastical scenic effects, which Texas Ballet Theater performed with a wide range of skills. John Henry Reid was sensational in the title role. For sheer classical dance power, however, nothing came close to Metropolitan Classical Ballet’s Holiday Program in Bass Performance Hall. The company’s Russian-trained dancers lit up the hall with a free-for-all medley — of excerpts from Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker — that wouldn’t look out of place in any major opera house.

Readers’ choice: Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Staff choice: Håkan Hagegård and the Fort Worth Symphony

The veteran Scandinavian baritone still commands a supple, sonorous voice wonderfully suited to the introspective works of Grieg, Sibelius, and Stenhammar, which he explored here in May. His collaboration with conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Fort Worth Symphony on those works and Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer was inspired musicmaking that we don’t get to hear every day.

Readers’ choice: “Man with Briefcase”

Staff choice: “Vortex,” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Yep, it’s still there, threatening the sky like a one-finger salute. Thing is, Richard Serra’s “Vortex” — like a maple leaf in October — is turning the most luxurious hue of rust. Even better, it’s transcending its role as “piece of outdoor/public art” and becoming a kind of mythical destination, as if it formed naturally beneath a bridge or out in the woods. A good friend recalls stepping into the 67-foot sculpture to steal a first kiss from the woman who would later become his fiancée, and many other acquaintances tell stories of impromptu a cappella music performances taking place in its echoey embrace. And let’s face it: When you’re on the run from The Man, you could do worse than by hiding out in this poem of steel.

Readers’ choice: Magnolia at the Modern, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Staff choice: KinoMonda at TCU

Successive incarnations of this series are pegged to the semesters of the school year, but now that it’s running in summer, it’s practically a year-round event. Most Wednesdays offer up an eclectic mix of both high art and crowd-pleasing cinema from all corners of the world and all eras, with selections contributed by local experts (including, occasionally, Fort Worth Weekly) and food from local restaurants. It’s all free, too.

Readers’ choice: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St

Staff choice: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

On the weekends, the comfortable auditorium with state-of-the-art projection facilities and sound system plays host to some of the most challenging and esoteric fare in North Texas, including stuff that doesn’t play in Dallas. Highlights of the past year include Lucas Belvaux’s trilogy, Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, and Yoji Yamada’s The Twilight Samurai. What this program needs most: more screenings. l