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    After Fire at Sanctuary, First Baptist Dallas Church Mourns What’s Lost

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    As officials work to determine the cause, many lament the damage at First Baptist Dallas, a church that grew along with the downtown around it.The red brick outer walls of First Baptist Dallas Church were singed black on Saturday morning, and though they were still intact, along with the steeple at the front of the historic building, there was no sanctuary within. The roof, windows and interior were gone. And the smell of smoke lingered.Larry Smith and his wife, Rita, two members of the church, drove 20 miles from Arlington, Texas, to see firsthand the destruction of the fire from the previous night. Other members also gathered outside.Ms. Smith wiped tears from her eyes with a tissue as she talked about the sanctuary, with its dark wood pews and ornate carvings. There was a library in the church, she said, along with a printing shop and the offices of former pastors. “A lot of history in that building,” she said. Mr. Smith began to talk about what was lost when he trailed off, looking at the smoldering remains.Church members and other residents of the Dallas area mourned on Saturday the severe damage to the sanctuary, a landmark in the heart of Dallas where many of the megachurch’s members have been baptized, married and memorialized.On Friday night, the blaze, which caused the church’s roof to collapse, grew to a four-alarm fire that sent smoke billowing over the city. More than 60 firefighting units responded to the scene.No injuries or fatalities have been reported, according to Dallas Fire-Rescue. The fire occurred in the old part of the church’s sprawling complex, where the main Sunday services are no longer held, but which has been in use since its construction in 1890.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roof Collapses at Delhi Airport Terminal Amid Storms and Heavy Rain

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      At least six people were injured when parts of the roof caved in and crushed vehicles at Indira Gandhi airport in New Delhi, according to local reports. All domestic departures were suspended.Part of the roof at a terminal at India’s busiest airport collapsed early Friday amid heavy thunderstorms and rains, causing injuries and trapping passengers. The airport suspended all departures from the terminal.India’s minister of civil aviation said in a social media post that rescue operations were in progress at Terminal 1 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and that emergency responders were on site. Airport officials said that the collapse happened around 5 a.m. local time in the departure area of the terminal and that all departures from the terminal had been suspended. Terminal 1 handles domestic flights.Part of the roof collapsed onto the pickup and drop-off area outside the terminal, crushing several vehicles, the Press Trust of India, a news agency, reported, citing local fire officials. At least six people were injured, according to the report.More than 600 flights out of the airport were delayed and 17 canceled as of around 8 a.m., according to FlightAware, a flight information tracking site.The terminal was recently renovated and expanded to reach a capacity of 40 million passengers annually, according to a news release from the airport.This is a developing story. More

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      On the Met Roof, Skywriting His Way to Freedom

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      Petrit Halilaj of Kosovo began drawing as a refugee child in the Balkans during a violent decade and invented a calligraphic world of memory.When this old world starts getting me downAnd people are just too much for me to faceI climb way up to the top of the stairsAnd all my cares just drift right into space …I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble-proof …Up on the roofSo crooned the Drifters in 1962, making the inner-city rooftop — “tar beach” — a very cool spring-and-summertime place to be. And while the roof of the august Metropolitan Museum of Art may not have figured in anyone’s getaway plan back then, it does now, thanks to the Roof Garden sculptural commissions the museum has been installing, seasonally, over the past dozen years.The latest of them, “Petrit Halilaj, Abetare,” which opens on Tuesday, is one of the airiest looking so far. Indeed, drawing — or skywriting — rather than sculpture is what I’d call this openwork tangle of dark bronze-and-steel calligraphic lines tracing silhouetted images — of birds, flowers, stars, a giant spider and a fairy tale house — against the panorama of Manhattan beyond and Central Park below.It’s a funky, sky-reaching fantasia. But Paradise? Uh-uh. The spider looks mean. The house tilts as if melting. And what’s with a scattering of spiky phalluses, and a Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem, and mysterious words and anagrams — Runik, Kukes, KFOR — with explicitly down-to-earth connections?And what to make of the fact that all of these images and words were lifted from a single prosaic source. They were found, scratched and doodled on the surfaces of classroom desktops by generations of elementary school kids in the Balkan territories of Europe during a time of brutalizing regional war.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeffrey Gibson Will Bring Sculptures of Ancestral Spirits to Met Facade

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      The Met named its 2025 art commissions, which include Gibson’s facade sculptures and a roof garden installation by the soundsmith Jennie C. Jones.Last summer, Jeffrey Gibson received an honor that most artists wait for their entire lives. Would he represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, the art world’s version of the Olympics? Only a few weeks after accepting, there was another auspicious ring on the telephone.It was the curator David Breslin, wondering if Gibson would become the sixth artist to alter the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade with newly commissioned sculptures.“He called me from the beach,” recalled Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee artist known for infusing abstract works with queer and native themes.For the commission, Gibson will return to the ancestral spirit figures he started assembling in 2015. The challenge will be translating these delicate structures of beadwork, textiles and paint into four weatherproof sculptures that will gaze upon museum visitors from their plinths above Fifth Avenue. They will be on view from September 2025 through May 2026.Breslin, who leads the Met’s modern and contemporary art department, described Gibson as “one of the most incredible artists of his generation.”Gibson’s 2015 sculpture, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” an ancestral spirit figure made from glazed ceramic and repurposed tipi pole, artificial sinew and copper jingles. Gibson will explore his Indigenous heritage, abstraction and popular cultures on the Met facade.Jeffrey GibsonWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More