Here is an overview of shows coming to museums and arts organizations in the Dallas and Fort Worth region this fall, including shows at the Crow Museum of Asian Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and other institutions.
The Crow Museum of Asian Art presents Groundbreakers: Post-War Japan and Korea, bringing together artists concerned with materiality, space, and performance in the 1950s. Proponents of the Mono-ha, Dansaekhwa, and Gutai movements rigorously interrogated and explored artistic performances, made playful use of materials, and experimented with new techniques. Two contemporary artists, Do Ho Suh and Tatsuo Miyajima, are included as means to provoke a dialog and conversation about the antecedents and legacy of performance art for contemporary artists.
With artworks drawn from the Dallas Museum of Art collection, the exhibition opens at the Crow Museum’s University of Texas at Dallas location in Richardson on Saturday, September 6, and runs through July 26, 2026.
A survey of British sculptor Antony Gormley opens at the Nasher Sculpture Center on Saturday, September 13. This is the first U.S. museum survey of the Turner Prize-winning artist’s work, spanning 45 years of considering how sculpture, architecture, and bodies interact. In addition to the work shown at the museum, Mr. Gormley will debut a project installed on the rooftops of skyscrapers in and around downtown Dallas.
At the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson brings together more than 30 years’ worth of documentary photography by this Dallas-based artist, focusing on Ms. Wilson’s sojourns across Mexico and areas just beyond its northern border. Roaming Mexico will include recent work made specifically for this exhibition. For four decades, her images have broadly defined the mythological “American West” as populated with characters defined by their distance, landscapes, and lifeways that stand in sharp contrast to claustrophobic urban life.
In conjunction with Ms. Wilson’s show, the Meadows will present an intimate exhibition featuring the work of Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, whom the museum calls “one of the most important artists in 20th-century Latin America.” A contemporary of luminaries Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Edward Weston, Mr. Álvarez Bravo’s photography reflects the complexities of Mexican identity, juxtaposing the everyday with the enigmatic.
From “Creatures and Captives: Painted Textiles of the Ancient Andes”
Creatures and Captives: Painted Textiles of the Ancient Andes presents Andean textiles from the Dallas Museum of Art collection, dating from the 11th through 16th centuries. According to the museum, ancient Andean artists painted animals, humans, abstract motifs, and mythical beings on undyed cotton cloth in a subtle color palette, standing apart from traditionally woven textiles. The exhibition runs from Tuesday, September 23 through February 22, 2026.
Wearable works of art feature in the DMA’s second fall exhibition, Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art, with more than 350 works on view. The show surveys nearly a century of innovative jewelrymaking, illuminating connections that unite established masters and burgeoning talents, and that transcend chronological boundaries and geographical borders. Constellations opens Sunday, November 9, and runs through May 3, 2026.
Maud Madsen, “Play the Game,” 2021, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches
The education-focused New York Academy of Art presents its Chubb Fellows and Friends at Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas, from Saturday, October 4 through Sunday, December 14. The Academy annually awards Chubb Fellowships to three outstanding alumni. This exhibition features awardees alongside peers and professors for a 43-year retrospective of the institution’s figurative art tradition.
Image copyright and trademarked Home Box Office, Inc.
The swashbuckling fantasy phenomenon Game of Thrones arrives at the Arlington Museum of Art on October 4, with Game of Thrones: The Exhibition, running through April 5, 2026. The exhibition will showcase 60 meticulously crafted costumes from the eight seasons of the HBO series, along with props from the show, and a behind-the-scenes look at the popular show.
Chris Wolston, “Flower Power” installation view. Photo: Joe Kramm
The Dallas Contemporary hosts two solo exhibitions opening Friday, November 7. Chris Wolston’s work ranges from furniture and lighting to installation and sculpture, blending traditional techniques and materials with a wry, contemporary realism. According to the non-collecting, kunsthalle-style museum, Mr. Wolston “arrives at an entirely original postmodern aesthetic, imbued with material fluency and environmental urgency.” His show runs through February 1, 2026.
The first major U.S. institutional exhibition of London-based painter Pam Evelyn will present large-scale works created over an extended period of focused painting in various locations, including Cornwall, England, and the Watermill Center on Long Island in New York. At Dallas Contemporary, Ms. Evelyn’s works will be installed in concert with the gallery’s architecture, creating false walls and divisions within the space that allow for views from every angle. The exhibition will be on display through March 15, 2026.
Fort Worth
An artwork by Joe Harjo
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts will inaugurate its new home with Joe Harjo: Indian Removal Act III: We are a Wounding, the third and final installment in Mr. Harjo’s exhibition series. The artist describes these shows as “delving into the historical and contemporary issues that have profoundly affected Native American communities, our land, our narratives, and our pursuit of prosperous futures.” Opening Friday, September 5 and running through Saturday, November 15, the exhibition includes new photography, video, sculpture, prints, text, and installation.
Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956) “Abstraction,” c. 1925, oil on board
American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection arrives to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art on Saturday, September 6, and will run through January 25, 2026. The first exhibition dedicated to the collection of businessman, philanthropist, and Texas native Charles Butt includes works by American modernist icons Romare Bearden, Edward Hopper, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alma Thomas, and Andrew Wyeth, many of which have never before been on public view.
From “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection”
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth presents Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, touted by the museum as “the most important private collection of Roman marble sculptures in the world. Comprising more than 600 works and a wide range of sculptural types and subjects, its holdings rival those of major institutions, including the Capitoline and Vatican Museums.” Fifty-eight ancient marble masterpieces will be on view from Sunday, September 14 through January 25, 2026.
As noted previously in Glasstire, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will be the only U.S. venue to host the landmark exhibition Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, a retrospective honoring the English artist. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition is broadly chronological in scope, bringing together nearly 50 works made throughout Ms. Saville’s career.
The exhibition will open Sunday, October 12, 2025, and run through January 18, 2026. The artist will be on hand at the museum to deliver a lecture on Friday, October 10 at 6 p.m.
Wichita Falls
Kemp Center for the Arts
The Kemp Center for the Arts in Wichita Falls will open its annual Small Works Juried Exhibit on Thursday, September 18, featuring more than 140 original artworks all 5 by 7 inches or smaller, created by artists from around the country. The show was judged by renowned miniaturist Marianela de la Hoz.
Learn more about other current and upcoming exhibitions in the Dallas/Fort Worth area via Glasstire’s event listings.
“A solo exhibition of the pioneering modern ink artist and Houston resident Hung Hsien (洪嫻, Margaret Chang, b. 1933) celebrates the life and artistic legacy of one of the most important yet underrepresented contributors to the development of modern ink painting. The exhibition will be the artist’s first retrospective, surveying a career that spans more than 70 years, from her early years as a fledgling artist in Taiwan to her mature, signature cosmic abstractions.”
“Nuestras Huellas en Esta Tierra / Our Footprints on This Land presents a powerful meditation on migration, belonging, and the traces we leave upon the land. Through immersive installations, Ibargüengoitia invites viewers to reflect on the psychological and physical toll of displacement and the resilience of those who traverse unfamiliar territories.”
Daniela Oliver de Portillo, “Una Crushing Enormidad,” 2025
“Daniela Oliver de Portillo’s process is complex — digital and cyanotype photo processes, drawings, floral arrangements, and hand-formed ceramic vases reflect the nuances of everyday life for mothers. The use of flowers is often at the forefront of the work, long associated with domestic beauty, celebration, and ritual, serving as a metaphor for the duality of perceived effortlessness and the deep complexities of motherhood. Her work aims to reveal what lies beneath society’s reduced roles and expectations: the stories, histories, and identities beyond first impressions.”
“Born in Mexico City in 1935, Manuel Miranda began painting in 1967 and worked as an illustrator for several Mexican publications before moving to McAllen, TX, in 2000. Animals Living Together presents a series of artworks made by Miranda between 2009-2025 featuring figures painted in a stream of consciousness style that explore his interests in literature and philosophy while attempting to maintain a childlike sense of wonder for the surrounding world. Useful references include the automatic drawings of Surrealism and Dada, along with the pure and authentic creative impulses of the Art Brut movement.”
“Marcus Xavier Chormicle, a primarily lens based artist, will be exhibiting a series of serigraphs featuring patterns extrapolated from imagery from his photographic practice. BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO is an exploration of generationality and belonging through design and patterning. Taking inspiration from the final pages of AutoBiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar ‘Zeta’ Acosta, Chormicle uses imagery, taken from his photographic practice, of a raven in flight and a man, his uncle, in free fall. The patterns of the multitudinous nature of relations among Indigenous and Chicano people. The repeated figures invoke themes of travel, migration, flight and the perpetuation of generational cycles.”
by Lauren McGaughy, Texas Newsroom, Yilun Cheng, Houston Chronicle
For years, experts in Houston have been studying the idea of building massive tunnels under the area to divert floodwaters and save lives and property. Now, Elon Musk wants a piece of the project.
Shelby Talcott, reporting under the euphemistic headline “White House Fires CDC Director Over Vaccine Disagreements”:
A showdown at the CDC culminated in the White House formally
firing its director, Susan Monarez, on Wednesday night.
Monarez was ousted earlier in the day, after Health and Human
Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked her to step down
amid disagreements over changing vaccine policies, The Washington
Post reported — and HHS confirmed her departure.
But Monarez’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, pushed back. Zaid said in a
statement later that a White House staffer had delivered the news,
and given that Monarez is a Senate-confirmed officer, “only the
president himself can fire” her. “For this reason, we reject the
notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she
remains as CDC Director,” Zaid said.
Four other top CDC directors also resigned Wednesday.
“These high profile departures will require oversight by the”
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, panel
chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., posted on X.
The “White House” didn’t fire Monarez. Donald Trump did. And while technically, she was fired over “vaccine disagreements”, yes, those disagreements weren’t scientific or medical. It was science on one side, and abject quackery on the other. We really needed the CDC five years ago. We’re in big trouble if we need them again before the US electorate ousts these wingnuts.
Despite losing the Democratic primary in June, Andrew Cuomo will be on the ballot this November as an independent candidate for New York City mayor. The Onion sat down with the former governor to discuss his campaign.
The Onion : How do you feel your campaign has been going so far?
Cuomo: I haven’t really been following it.
The Onion : What is your biggest political weakness?
Cuomo: Name recognition.
The Onion : You’ve allegedly been coordinating with President Trump. How did the two of you come into contact?
Cuomo: Our hands met while rubbing the same female staffer’s lower back.
The Onion : As mayor, what would be the most important areas to focus on first?
Cuomo: Her hips, and then her thighs.
The Onion : What is your vision for the future of New York?
Cuomo: My personal necropolis. A charnel city of the damned. The bloodstained throne from which I shall tame death herself.
The Onion : What advice would you give young people interested in politics?
Cuomo: Always be empathetic, resilient, and the child of a governor.
PHOENIX—In an intense bout of insecurity and wariness toward his partner’s superficial focus, Fortune 500 CEO William Freitag, 57, reportedly expressed concerns Thursday that the 23-year-old woman he was currently dating was only into him for his keen business acumen. “I’m trying not to let it get to me, but deep down I can’t help feeling she’s just like all the rest and only with me because she wants networking tips and access to my strong client base—a tale as old as time, really,” said the multimillionaire head of Summit Network Systems, expressing bitterness after dinner with the young office assistant, who he speculated was only seeing him as an excuse to pick his brain for financial advice and team leadership expertise. “Look, I’m not a sucker. I’m well aware she wouldn’t agree to be seen in public with me if I didn’t have my talent for negotiation and the respect of my clients. Women like that only have one thing on their minds: finding a guy who has increased operating revenues year over year for each of the past three fiscal quarters.” At press time, Freitag admitted he was only dating the woman for her comprehensive knowledge of Gracie Abrams’ discography.
SPARTANBURG, SC—Introducing a new promotion that will be available to both adults and children at its restaurants nationwide, 24-hour diner chain Denny’s announced this week that free pancakes would be provided to customers who take their fighting outside. “We know our customers love coming to Denny’s to participate in violent late-night brawls, and now those guests will be treated to a complimentary short stack as a thank-you for moving the bloodshed out of the restaurant and into the parking lot,” said company spokesperson Tricia Kim, who added that patrons watching the melee from inside a participating Denny’s location were welcome to bang the windows and yell “Fight! Fight! Fight!” in encouragement. “Once you’re done slamming your opponent through a car windshield, we invite you to wash the blood off your face and clothes in our bathroom and head back to your banquette for some fluffy buttermilk hotcakes—on us. This offer is valid for one fight per customer. Please note that fight participants who jump behind the counter, grab one of our kitchen knives, and use it to stab their opponents are not eligible for this deal.” The promotion follows last month’s offer of a free grilled ham slice for Denny’s customers who keep their verbal abuse down to a reasonable volume.
1. I’m worried my boss will expect the same work from me after I go part-time
I work for a university in a staff position and have no coworkers who share my responsibilities; it’s only me and my boss running our programs. I am also currently enrolled in the university as a graduate student, and my boss is my advisor. I like to think I have a great relationship with my boss; she’s been a wonderful mentor and I’ve learned a lot. However, she can be scattered and unreliable, and while I don’t think she takes the work I do for granted, she sometimes doesn’t realize some of her decisions succeed only because I’m there to pick up the slack. For example, she recently decided to massively expand the study area for a research project we do. This decision has led to me having to spend multiple days out of the office doing field work alone to get everything prepared for the research period (which occurs multiple times a year), since she cannot assist me due to her existing obligations. While I enjoy this work, it throws a wrench in my daily workflow and I’ve had to adjust my schedule and work overtime to accommodate it several times.
The funding for my position will run out next month, and we don’t have funding for me to continue at full-time after that date passes. Instead, I’ll be dropping to part-time until the end of the year. I’ll actually stay on the payroll until next spring using my accrued leave to get my tuition waived, but for all intents and purposes my position will be terminated in December. I’ll also be entering the research phase of my thesis work this fall, so I don’t actually mind the drop in hours. However, I’m worried my boss still expects the same level of work from me, both in the fall as a part-time employee and in the spring when I’m not supposed to be working at all, and hasn’t started to prepare for my departure. I feel comfortable putting my foot down and saying no if she asks me to do something beyond my decreased responsibilities, but by doing so I’ll basically be watching everything I’ve worked on crash and burn because she cannot manage it herself and doesn’t have the funding to bring on someone else in my stead. I’m also concerned that the additional work added to her plate will make her neglect her duties as my academic advisor. I’m supposed to graduate next spring, but I have a real concern that may be impacted or even delayed by this change.
I’m wondering if you can give me advice on how to “brace for impact,” so to speak. All I can think to do at the moment is sit her down and try to plan how to scale back our workload, but I don’t know how effective it will be even if she’s receptive to the idea. I don’t want to avoid her outside of my new 20-hour workweek to avoid getting caught up in assisting her with unrelated work either, but at this point I’m afraid I might have to. Is there anything else you can recommend?
Sit down with her now to go over the specifics of what will no longer be getting done once you move to part-time hours so it’s explicitly spelled out. You can also present potential trade-offs for her to choose from, like “I can do A and B but not C, or I could do C but not A and B. Which do you prefer?” You should also specifically name what you’re worried about: “I’m worried that without a clear plan for exactly how my job will change next month, X will happen to the Y project, or you might still be looking to me to manage Y after I no longer can.” You can mention your worries about what you’ll need next year too: “I’m going to need XYZ from you to graduate and I know you’re going to be swamped. Is there anything we can plan out now to navigate that better?”
That may or may not work, but it’ll give you your best shot at managing the situation (along with your willingness to refuse to take on extra work once you’re part-time, which is crucial too).
I work in a public-facing field. Occasionally we set up an info table off-site at events like a back-to-school night or street festival.
At a recent street festival, our table was almost within touching distance of large speakers. We could not clearly communicate with the guests stopping by (I could shout a sentence or two, but not converse with any nuance). I felt uncomfortable, and downloaded an app to check noise levels. It showed levels that hovered around 80 decibels but rose often over 85 or even over 90. I was able to research that OSHA’s noise regulations kick in if noise is 85 decibels or higher “as an eight-hour time-weighted average” but not any clear information about a shorter period of time. I texted the person from our organization who was coordinating the event, asking who we should speak to about having one of the speakers moved or the music turned down and specifically mentioned the decibel level and that I wasn’t sure it was safe. They responded that they didn’t think we could do anything, but that there was enough staff present that I could leave and return to my usual location.
I did leave — aside from being uncomfortable, I have moderate hearing loss and don’t take chances — but still feel awkward about the whole thing. I don’t know anyone else who was working but they were all people with less clout in the organization, mostly on-call staff who just fill in as needed and might not have felt comfortable complaining. So either I was being a bit precious by leaving, or I was leaving behind some more vulnerable staff. (I did tell them what my app was showing.) Was it reasonable for me to bail under those circumstances?
Yes — but ideally you would have first talked to the other staff there about whether they felt comfortable staying or not. As what sounds like the most senior person there, you were well-positioned to ask if they felt comfortable remaining despite the noise or would prefer to leave — and then if they wanted to leave, you could have advocated for that to happen (or, depending on what you felt you had standing to do, simply informed the event coordinator that you were making that call). Even if they said they were comfortable staying, it also might have been worth raising the question of whether staying would achieve your team’s goals or not; if you were just there to have a visible presence, maybe it would, but if the point of being there was to talk with people who came by your table and the noise made that impossible, staying might not have been a good use of anyone’s time.
It’s still worth raising those questions with someone in charge now, so that there’s clearer agreement about what to do if a similar situation comes up again (and so everyone staffing these events has guidance about it ahead of time).
3. How to talk to an employee about inappropriate Teams use
One of my employees (an indirect report) posts messages to Teams in a way that several people on the team find excessive, distracting, and problematic in various ways but that aren’t outright violating workplace policies. The messages often have typos or formatting issues and could be improved by better editing and being shared in a more conscientious manner.
We have encouraged this person to share similar posts in a dedicated channel (so that we aren’t all pinged with each post) but those messages get little traction and the person ends up sharing multiple (lengthy) messages in the general group chat.
I expect the advice would be to have clear etiquette guidelines for posting to the chat and have me or the direct manager explain to the person why many of their posts are an issue for the team and what we expect going forward.
But how do you address a situation where the person seems to not realize that their posts are problematic? And where some of what they post is appreciated but about 80% of their posts are likely unnecessary? Telling them not to post to the platform seems extreme. Having to actively monitor someone’s posts (when it isn’t a case of harassment or other workplace wrongdoing) doesn’t seem like the best use of management time. Or is it?
No one should have to actively monitor their posts to manage this if you address it more directly. Right now you’re relying on hints when they haven’t worked. Instead, their manager needs to have a more direct conversation with them and tell them explicitly to stop. “Encouraging” them to put the posts in a different channel clearly hasn’t been enough; it’s time for much clearer direction without softening the message (like “stop doing X” versus “it might be better to do Y”).
I think you and their manager haven’t done that because it seems like this person should just get it the way other people have, and it feels too heavy-handed to lay out rules for something like this — but when it’s clear the person isn’t getting it, this is the right next step. Plus, to someone who’s not picking up on hints, explicit instruction often won’t feel like too much; instead, it might feel like a relief to be handed the playbook everyone else is using. (But even if it does strike them as overly heavy-handed, it’s still better to make those expectations explicit to them than to let them go on annoying everyone.)
4. Should I contact my former manager to thank her for how she handled my assault?
A few years ago, I was in grad school and working a hospitality job when a client sexually assaulted me during an event. I reported it immediately to my manager, who handled the situation with an immense amount of kindness and professionalism. My company was very big, and along with dealing with their atrocious workers compensation process and intense therapy and living very far away from almost all my family and friends and having no support system, I never got the chance to speak to my manager afterwards. I also left the company and the country abruptly as soon as I was able to and didn’t say goodbye to many coworkers who I’d been very close to.
I’ve since moved to a different continent and am working in an amazing job in my field (thanks to your resources!) and thriving professionally. With time and distance and lots of therapy, I’ve been able to fully appreciate how capably my manager handled things that night and how much kindness she showed me on probably the worst day of my life. During my recovery, which was awful, her kindness was one of the things that I held on to. I feel a little regretful that I left so abruptly and even more so knowing that most people at my company had no context for why I did that.
Would it be appropriate to reach out to my ex-manager to thank her for what she did for me that night? And would it be appropriate to do that via LinkedIn? I’m in a completely different field now and don’t need anything from her, I’m only reaching out to thank her, but I don’t have any of her social media so LinkedIn would be the only place I can think to contact her. What sort of script would you recommend if I were to contact her?
She would probably really appreciate that! You could let her know that you left so quickly that you didn’t get a chance to tell her that you appreciated how she handled things that night, and how you’re doing now. If you want to share what you said here about her kindness being one of the things you held on to during your recovery, I suspect she would be very moved by that. (And it would be perfectly fine to use a LinkedIn message to say it.)
Also, please don’t feel any guilt or regret over leaving so abruptly. Sometimes things happen in life that mean you do need to leave a job very abruptly (including things like health crises or family emergencies too) and that’s okay! You had zero obligation to prioritize a smooth transition out of the job at a time when you had so much more going on.
5. How can I decline a promotion I don’t want because of my health?
I’ve been at my current job for a year. I left a high intensity job that I’d had for 15 years for this role because it has fewer responsibilities and is significantly easier, even if it’s not what I want to be doing, in order to prioritize my chronic illness.
That said, my manager is dropping hints that I will be offered a promotion soon to a managerial role. I’ve been trying to respond with hints of my own that I’m happy where I am and I like my job as it is, but it’s clear that a promotion may be on the table.
I not only don’t want to be promoted (I don’t mind my job but I certainly don’t want to do a harder version of it), I also can’t manage a more difficult role due to my health needs taking priority.
How can I respectfully turn down a promotion without revealing personal health information? My manager has no idea I have a chronic illness — that’s why I wanted an easier job in the first place, so I could be successful at it within my limits — and I worry if I mention I’m declining to prioritize my health, it will affect how my manager and my small company sees my overall ability to do the job I currently have, too.
How explicit are these hints? If she’s saying something like “I’d love to move you into a management role role at some point,” it’s okay to just be direct and say, “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m really happy with the job I’m in and took it specifically because I didn’t want management responsibilities anymore.” Or, “I’ve had management jobs in the past and it’s not an area I want to move back into, but thank you for thinking of me.”
If you say that and they formally offer it to you at some point anyway, you can decline using similar language. You don’t need to get into health issues at all — although if they’re really pushing, you can say that you have commitments in your non-work life right now that mean you can’t take on the responsibilities they’re proposing.
Your boss is probably assuming you’d be happy with a promotion; it’s just a matter of explaining that’s not in fact the case.
The first update is that some extra discussion took place in the comments of my original post. Reader “Greg” pointed out that there was an Apple employee named John Yen who worked on the Mac OS during the System 7 era, and suggested he might be the “jy” in the associated “msjy” creator code. That would leave “ms” potentially being Microseeds, which is the company that developed Apple Backup.
This led me to search further, and I stumbled upon Apple’s patent for the automatic OS recovery functionality filed in 1994. It was granted in 2002 and expired in 2019. John Yen is listed as the inventor. The patent contains some screenshots of the exact UI that I experienced while testing the functionality. I never thought to look through patents, but I should have. They are definitely a useful tool for historical research on this type of stuff. I thought that was a really cool discovery. Thanks, Greg!
Now, onto the second thing. After my research had seemingly concluded, I never turned off my eBay alerts. Last week, I received a notification about a damaged tray-loading Performa 550 (manufacture date February 1994) being parted out. Sure enough, one of the seller’s auctions was a working 160 MB hard drive from the same machine. Of course, I couldn’t resist snatching it up.
As soon as it arrived, I dumped all the contents. I was in for a very pleasant surprise: this hard drive also had the invisible recovery partition intact!
Better yet, unlike the last one, it still had all of the original Performa software, including Apple Backup, sitting in the Applications folder.
At one point during my initial search, I was really concerned that I might never find the lost recovery partition. Now everything has changed, and I’m pleased to be able to say I found it twice!
This second hard drive is a huge discovery because I now have two data points, which has led me to gain a little more confidence about how I think the special recovery partition was created in the first place. You may recall from my previous post that Apple’s own tech notes said that Apple Backup was responsible for creating it, but I was never able to find any evidence supporting that claim. Unfortunately, the original owner had deleted Apple Backup from the first hard drive before I got my hands on it, so I couldn’t draw any conclusions.
This new-to-me hard drive was exciting because Apple Backup had not been deleted! I was half expecting to find a weird unpreserved version of Apple Backup hanging around on it, but nope. It’s just the same version 1.2 from System 7.1P6 that I had already looked at in depth, right down to the creation/modification dates and the exact number of bytes used.
The hidden partition’s contents are exactly the same as what I found on the first hard drive. The file sizes are all precisely the same, and the icons are positioned identically too. That solves one mystery: the weird icon positions inside the invisible partition were not something the original owner caused. They were just weird on all machines.
The only difference I found is that the creation and modification dates of the files are slightly different between the two drives. The easiest place to show this is in the Get Info window of the partition. On the left is the first hard drive, and on the right is the second hard drive.
You can see that the exact same number of bytes have been used, but the partition on the second hard drive was created about 21 hours later. Also, it appears that on both machines, it took about 4-5 minutes to finish populating it.
One of the things I called out in my first post on this subject was that the System file strangely had a modification date several months later. It turns out that something similar happened with the second hard drive, but it ended up being a date way back in the past — the August 27, 1956 date that some Macs default to if the PRAM battery goes bad. Again, hard drive #1 on the left and hard drive #2 on the right:
I still don’t have a great explanation for why the System file’s modification date changed on both of these partitions. Maybe a third-party utility or installer happened to tweak the modification date at some point. In my earlier post, I had suggested that the At Ease ‘INIT’ resource being missing from the System file could have potentially explained the modification date change, but that resource was also missing from the second hard drive’s recovery partition System file. Plus, At Ease had not been uninstalled from the second machine. So that blows that theory out of the water. Clearly, the At Ease INIT was never part of the recovery partition’s System file.
One other interesting thing I found was that the main Hard Disk volume had the exact same creation date on both drives:
Obviously, I would love to be given the opportunity to analyze a third hard drive in the future to gain even more confidence. With all that in mind, I think I’m much closer to being able to reach a conclusion today:
I still can’t be 100% sure, but I think this latest hard drive analysis hammers the final nail in the coffin to the theory that the partition was created based on an action the user performed. I now believe the recovery partition was added by Apple in the factory, and the technote was just wrong about Apple Backup being involved. I can’t find any code in Apple Backup that does it, and this second hard drive gives me a good reason to doubt that a customized Performa-550-specific Apple Backup version is hiding out there in the wild somewhere.
I’m still weirded out by the other initials in the creator code being “MS” given that Microseeds developed Apple Backup, but all signs are pointing to this being a factory-programmed thing. I think that makes the most sense anyway. If you’re Apple and you’ve developed this functionality, why would you only enable it after the user has bought a zillion floppy disks and manually performed a backup? Why not just give it to everyone and allow them all to benefit from it?
The fact that the creation date of the recovery partition was not exactly the same between the two hard drives, but it was still within less than a day, is fascinating to me. This means the recovery partition wasn’t simply imaged onto every machine at a block level, or the dates would have been exactly the same on every machine. Maybe one of the operations performed at the factory during testing was to run a script that created the partition? This would explain why the creation date of the recovery volume was slightly different between the machines.
Another data point in favor of this theory comes from a recently-preserved Apple Restoration CD: Market Software Series Volume 1 from March 1994. It has a bunch of factory Performa software bundles. I found a quick comment about “action atoms” for a backup partition not being included in the configuration that goes with the ultra-rare Performa 560 Money Magazine Edition:
I suspect it’s referring to the recovery partition, and it’s implying that Apple did have some kind of restore/imaging script that created it, and they specifically chose not to put it into this configuration.
Unfortunately, the Performa 550 recovery image on this same CD doesn’t mention anything about the recovery partition, and doesn’t create it. It’s also directed to be used for several other Performa models, so I don’t think Apple intended for this recovery CD to comprehensively restore a machine to the exact state it was in when it left the factory. It was just meant to restore it to something operable that was close enough.
With all that out of the way, there’s one last update I want to talk about. In the first post, I mentioned that Apple published another tech note describing a bug where an educational Dinosaur Safari CD game would accidentally cause the machine to jump into recovery mode. I went so far as to buy the game, reproduce the problem, and post a video demonstrating it.
Looks like Creative Multimedia Corporation beat Apple to the punch at having a Mac app named Safari by almost a decade!
Several people were interested in learning more about why Dinosaur Safari did this. What would even cause an app launched from a CD to trigger the system to enter recovery mode? It’s definitely an odd bug, and worthy of a little more investigation.
I spent a little bit of time in MAME tracing what the game did leading up to the machine deciding to reboot. After looking through some CPU execution logs, I found that it was happening in the middle of InitResources(). When I mentioned this in #mac68k on Libera, Josh Juran quickly explained to me that apps aren’t supposed to call InitResources() in the first place. Inside Macintosh Volume I confirms this:
So that’s the problem. The app is calling a system function that it’s not supposed to, which results in the re-initialization of a bunch of system stuff, and somehow this causes the Mac to reboot into recovery mode. Strangely, the problem only happens if the app runs directly from the CD. It doesn’t happen if you copy it to your hard drive and launch it from there. Weird. Here’s the relevant part of the code as viewed in ResEdit:
It’s alongside a bunch of other standard toolbox initialization routines that are often called early during a classic Mac app’s lifetime. The developers of Dinosaur Safari inadvertently added a call to InitResources(). It’s kind of funny how it’s sitting there near the top of Apple’s public Resources.h header file, even though it’s not supposed to be called by programs. It’s almost like they were just daring someone to do it.
Anyway, to test this theory, I patched the CD to replace the InitResources trap instruction with a nop instead:
Using this modified CD, Dinosaur Safari runs perfectly fine and doesn’t activate the recovery partition.
I decided not to dive deeper and figure out the underlying sequence of events that leads to the reboot. It would be way too much reverse engineering work inside the bowels of the classic Mac OS for very little payoff. This experience might be a good clue about why Apple didn’t go forward with this functionality. I’d be shocked if Dinosaur Safari was the only program with this bug. Maybe it was too easy to inadvertently jump to recovery mode and confuse users.
This should be the end of my investigation into the Performa 550 recovery partition functionality, unless I happen to stumble upon a third hard drive in the future that radically changes my understanding of everything.
My blog isn’t turning solely into an Apple archaeology project, so if you’re not interested in old Mac stuff, never despair. I’ll write about lots of other fun stuff too. But as a forewarning, I do have another upcoming post about more obscure Apple software from the ’90s that was lost and is now found. This time, it was something that I doubt too many people even remembered existing. It’ll be a nice little blast to the past.
Fredericton, New Brunswick – Despite decades of research, a Fredericton man says that autism didn’t exist in his day and that he would like to show us a replica map he created of the 1920 Caledonian Railway, “I think it’s all blown out of proportion in the media,” Louis Wetmore said in an interview with […]
A shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis left at least two young children dead and another 17 people injured. Authorities say they do not yet know of a motive, but said the shooter released a manifesto on social media that has since been taken down. William Brangham reports and Geoff Bennett speaks with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. complimented Texas as Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a prohibition on using state tax dollars on specific products with additives, among other measures.
The NAACP's lawsuit joins a long-running federal case filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, in 2021. That case is now targeting the state's newly approved congressional maps.
According to court documents, Abrego, 37, admitted to creating multiple fake social media accounts impersonating the victim. He also admitted to creating fake nude images using AI or Photoshop. The same number used to create the fake account was traced back to Abrego.
Senate Bill 17 will bar people tied to China, Iran, North Korea or Russia from buying most Texas real estate, including farmland, homes and commercial property.
More than 90 speakers participated in the first evening public comment session held by the city council, which usually hears from constituents in the mid-afternoon. The typical meeting this year saw less than 50 speakers.
The messaging from the public comes as Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and a group of commissioners she deemed the "GOP 3" — even though two of them are Democrats like Hidalgo — elevated conflicting accounts of the budget deficit both in a series of news conferences before and during a nearly 12-hour commissioners court meeting on Tuesday.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said the shooter fired through the windows of Annunciation Church during Mass on Wednesday. The gunman was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
My department was part of an overall reorganization earlier this year, and now our new management team has decided to reduce our workforce. My team and I were blindsided with layoffs and job changes this past week. Most of our core job functions are being reduced or outsourced. I got a call while I was on vacation from the director of my department that my manager, many of my coworkers, and all of my direct reports were being let go. At the time of the call, the decision had already been made and everyone had been told, so I had no say or ability to advocate for them. I am being kept on, but my responsibilities and role will be changing.
The people being laid off have been given an end date three months in the future, as well as severance packages that extend their pay and benefits through the end of the year. Overall, while the situation isn’t great, the organization is trying to be generous. Our HR group is also offering resume support and job search assistance as part of the severance package. The director is offering up his professional network to try to find new positions for everyone affected.
While these decisions have led to a lot of chaos upon my return to the office, everyone has been understanding for the most part. The decisions on who is staying and who is leaving are not personal or performance-based; they were based solely on the type of roles they have.
The issue I am facing on top of all these changes is with one of my direct reports, Lisa. She is taking this situation very personally. I completely understand her being upset (we all are!), but she is now letting it affect her work. I was told she was rude to the director and HR rep during the meeting where they told her she was part of the layoffs. Since I have been back in the office this week, she has arrived late, stayed away from her desk, and left early with no notice. The director traveled to our office yesterday to meet in person one-on-one with everyone. Lisa disappeared before he could meet with her and he asked me multiple times where she was, leaving me in an awkward situation trying to explain it.
I sat down with Lisa this morning to check in and address the behavior. I reiterated that this wasn’t something either of us had any control over, and all decisions were made at the top without any input from me or my manager. I want to be supportive of her during this transition period and help her plan her next phase of her career. She has had great performance reviews since she joined us last year, so this behavior is coming out of left field for me. She explained that she is still upset about the decision and was angry and offended that the director came to our office. She’s mad that she was let go by him when he doesn’t know her. She said she “doesn’t like people like that.” She then said she needed to go to the grocery store, which is why she walked off early. I reminded her that she is still employed for the next few months and she could still be fired anytime before then (and lose her severance). I don’t expect over-the-top enthusiasm for the job, but I do expect everyone to show up and do the work they are paid to do until their end date. I also reminded her that if she really doesn’t like it, she can quit at any time. She told me that she is no longer excited about the job and is only here because she needs the money. She also told me she is ready to burn down every bridge on her way out.
Lisa is young and new to the workforce. I understand being upset about the situation, no one wants to lose their job, but I think her behavior is extreme and immature. I need to get the basics of her work out of her over the next few months, but I’m not sure what else I can do to encourage that. I really liked having her on my team and hired for a reason — she showed a lot of promise and has been a great asset to the team until now. Do you have any advice on what else I can say to her or how else I should manage this situation? I would hate to have to terminate her before her severance kicks in. I can deal with a little slacking, but when senior leadership is watching and commenting on the behavior, I can’t defend it.
It’s absolutely understandable for someone to be upset they’re being laid off, and it makes sense to give people some grace about their reactions in the immediate aftermath. If Lisa was upset in the meeting or arrived late/left early that first week, okay. That’s within the range of understandable responses. (Granted, I don’t know exactly how rude she was in the meeting letting her know she was being laid-off — there’s a difference between showing frustration and attacking people personally, making threats, etc. There’s certainly a line that could be crossed there, but without specifics it’s hard to say.)
But if she does want to stay on through the current end date, it’s reasonable to expect her to pull it together now. She doesn’t need to go above and beyond (even if she used to), but she does need to behave civilly and professionally and meet a baseline level of conduct and performance; otherwise, it doesn’t make sense for you to keep her on. In fact, just the opposite — since there are other people there who are trying to deal with a difficult situation themselves, and their morale during this period matters too.
And if she’s really serious that she intends to “burn down every bridge” on her way out, then you can’t keep her on. That could mean destroying files, badmouthing the company to clients, and all sorts of sabotage that you can’t knowingly open your team up to.
So, you need to sit down with Lisa and spell this all out. Tell you understand she’s upset but you can’t keep her on the team for the remaining three months unless she’s willing to commit to civility, reliable hours, and a baseline level of work. Ask if she wants to take a few days off, or even a week, to decide if she’s able to meet the conditions you’re laying out or if she’d rather wrap up now.
I would also say very explicitly, “When you talk about burning bridges on your way out, that concerns me. Was that hyperbole in the heat of the moment, or something you really mean?”
You can be sympathetic to how upset she is while still making it clear what the requirements are to stay on.
For what it’s worth, the risk of this happening is exactly why so many companies have people leave immediately when they’re laid off.
The Florida Department of Transportation has ordered Miami Beach and at least eight other cities to remove rainbow-colored crosswalks, prompting local leaders and advocates to push back in defense of LGBTQ+ expression. What do you think?
“This will only make it more difficult to determine the sexual orientation of streets.”
Mary Beth Holcroft, Jockey’s Apprentice
“Aw, but I was going to graffiti a slur over it!”
Travis Levens, Goat Milker
“This sort of loud, flamboyant coloration has no place in Miami.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooter — armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol — approached the side of the church and shot through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews.
I found the real Spotify accounts of celebrities, politicians, and journalists. Many use their real names. With a little investigating, I could say with near-certainty: yep, this is that person.
I’ve been scraping their playlists for over a year. Some individuals even have a setting enabled that displays their last played song. I scraped this continuously, so I know what songs they played, how many times, and when.
The Panama Papers revealed hidden bank accounts. This reveals hidden tastes.
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5. Marcus Xavier Chormicle: BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO
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