"We imagine that they're here and that they've come to have fun with us, and we want artists to imagine that setting of festivities and imagine those spirits having a good time." That's Enrique Fernández Cervantes, curator and visual arts coordinator of the Bath House Cultural Center, talking to the Advocate about this year's Día de Muertos exhibition. The party he describes is going on right now in a building on East Lawther Drive. For the next month, that building runs most of what happens at White Rock Lake.
All of October, the lake's fall has centered on the pumpkins at the Dallas Arboretum. That season has a fixed end date, and once it passes, the Bath House takes over with free programs that run through Thanksgiving week.
November 1 is the handoff
The Arboretum's Autumn at the Arboretum: Harvest Hues runs September 19 through November 1, 2026, across the 66-acre garden beside the lake. This year's theme is art. More than 100,000 pumpkins, gourds and squash fill the grounds, with pumpkin houses inspired by Basquiat, Rothko, Bourgeois, Mondrian, Escher and Pollock, plus "Harvest Hues" letters by Dallas muralist Alli K.
You still have one evening and one weekend:
- Friday, October 30, 6 to 9 p.m.: The last Pumpkins and Pints night in Pumpkin Village, with a chili cookoff, live music and themed food and drinks.
- Saturday, October 31 and Sunday, November 1: The final two days of Harvest Hues.
Sunday, November 1 is also race morning on the loop. DRC's The Half, the Dallas Running Club's half marathon, 10K and 5K, starts that morning at Norbuck Park, 200 N. Buckner Blvd. The club bills it as the 51st annual edition and describes the courses as scenic miles around White Rock Lake. If you walk the dog or ride the loop on Sunday mornings, expect runners on the course that day. That same Sunday is the Arboretum's last day of pumpkins.
Three weeks of the Bath House's Día de Muertos exhibition have already passed by then, and its concert and Art Mart dates run until Thanksgiving week.
A 1986 play turned into a 40-year exhibition
The Bath House's Día de Muertos: They're Having a Party! is the center's 40th annual Día de Muertos exhibition. It runs October 10 through November 7, 2026, at 521 E. Lawther Dr. The City of Dallas says the show includes artworks and altar installations and is free and open to the public. The City's call for entries in August asked for art in various media and altars by local, regional and national artists.
The show began as an extra piece attached to a stage production. The Advocate's 40th-anniversary story traces it to Cora Cardona Hurst, founder of Teatro Dallas, who used the Bath House as Teatro's home in the 1980s. She told the Advocate where it began:
"In 1986, I staged Don Juan Tenorio by Jose Zorrilla, the first DOD show, along with an altar where audiences were able to appreciate the arts and crafts made in Mexico during this holiday."
In the play, some characters dine at tombstones. Cardona Hurst told the Advocate that this echoes the tradition of dining and celebrating in Mexican cemeteries for the holiday. She then brought the altars into the Bath House galleries to teach audiences about Día de Muertos. The public responded, the director at the time invited her back, and the extra piece attached to a play became an exhibition that has returned for four decades. When Cervantes arrived from Mexico City in 1999, it was already a tradition.
This year's theme comes straight from that history. Cervantes told the Advocate that Día de Muertos is not about celebrating death but about remembering the people who have died and what they left behind. "They're Having a Party!" asks artists to show the departed celebrating, with marigolds, candles, music, food and stories, much like the cemetery feasts in Cardona Hurst's 1986 play.
The galleries are open noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and the center stays open until 10 p.m. on performance evenings. November 7 is the last day. Since Sundays and Mondays are closed, six gallery days remain from Halloween on: Saturday, October 31, and then Tuesday, November 3 through Saturday, November 7.
Tuesday nights at Lake Level
Those late hours on performance evenings matter because of the second program the Bath House runs this fall. Lakefront Live! is a free concert series held every other Tuesday in the fall and spring on the Lake Level stage, the building's semi-enclosed indoor-outdoor performance space. The City's series announcement says you can sit close to the stage under the pavilion or picnic on the lawn with the sunset and the skyline behind the lake. Each show is a 90-minute set with a 15-minute intermission. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the music starts at 7:30.
Brandi Waller Pace plays October 27. After that, two fall dates remain:
- Tuesday, November 10: TALJAMUZO
- Tuesday, November 24: rafa
After November 24, the stage is quiet until the spring season opens March 2, 2027, with Ryan Berg. Those two Tuesdays are the last Lakefront Live! shows of 2026. The second one lands two days before Thanksgiving.
The lake's calendar after the pumpkins
Laid out by date, the lake from Halloween to Thanksgiving week looks like this:
- Through Saturday, November 7: Día de Muertos: They're Having a Party! at the Bath House, Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m., free.
- Tuesday, November 10: TALJAMUZO at Lakefront Live!, doors at 7 p.m.
- Saturday, November 14, 8 a.m. to noon: For the Love of the Lake's Second Saturday Shoreline Spruce Up, a volunteer shoreline trash pickup that meets at 8007 Northwest Highway. Details are on the group's events page.
- Friday, November 20 through Sunday, November 22: Art Mart 2026 at the Bath House, with work by local and regional artists in painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, mosaics and glass, according to its event listing.
- Tuesday, November 24: rafa closes the fall Lakefront Live! season.
The Spruce Up is the one item on the list that isn't at the Bath House. It also fits the season, since a volunteer cleanup is better suited to a mild November morning than to August.
If you're walking to the Bath House along Garland Road, that part of the trail is open again. Dallas Water Utilities closed the White Rock Trail between East Lawther Drive and Winsted this summer while crews grouted an abandoned 36-inch wastewater main to reduce future sinkhole risk. The Advocate reported on August 6 that the grouting was finished and the trail and road section would reopen August 7. The route between the Arboretum end of Garland Road and East Lawther Drive is clear again.
The Bath House sits at 521 E. Lawther Dr. Its galleries close at 6 p.m. on weekdays, and on November 10 and 24 the doors open again at 7 for the concerts.
Our team spends a lot of time at the lake too, and we enjoy keeping track of how the shoreline changes from one season to the next. If you'd like to hear from someone who follows Lakewood this closely, the advisors at Vancleve | Garcia Group would be glad to talk about the neighborhood with you. Let's Get Started.
