09/17/2026
Meet the panelists for “The People’s House” closing reception on Saturday, September 19th.
The panel brings together local experts and artists to discuss the architectural and civic history of I.M. Pei’s Dallas City Hall, current debates and developments affecting the building, and the role of art and artists in preserving public memory.
Veronica (TYC) Pamindanan is a Filipino American spoken word artist, community leader, and event coordinator in the DFW area. She is dedicated to uplifting emerging talent and serving as a cultural bridge within the Filipino community. Her work is grounded in themes of healing, identity, and transformation, using poetry as a tool for connection and empowerment.
She has been featured at events and institutions including the Dallas 150th Anniversary, the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Lit, Lonestar Palengke, SXSW, Austin Lumikha, and more. Her voice has also touched national slam stages, having competed in Kentucky, Florida, and Tennessee.
Through performance, platform building, and intentional community work, Veronica’s mission is to create cultural space for others and to impact on a national scale.
Michael Phillips is a scholar of American race relations, Texas history, right-wing politics, and apocalyptic religions.
Phillips received a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1983 and worked at various newspapers in North Texas, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in the 1980s.
After earning his master’s degree in history from the University of California at Riverside in 1994, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. His dissertation, won the University of Texas at Austin Outstanding Dissertation Award and was published as White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, That book won the 2007 Texas Historical Commission’s prize for best book on Texas history.
In 2019 he was named one of the first group of community college professors to receive a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies
Nishtha Kapuria-Cardozo is a Punjabi Texan and DFW native who moved to Austin for school and after a nomadic era, returned to her hometown of Arlington, TX with her partner. During her time on the road, she was inspired to paint by the beauty of this land’s diverse landscapes. Her first art pieces were simply a way to decorate their new home, but art quickly turned into her greatest joy and it is in creating where she feels most connected with her childhood self.
She began with acrylic and now her primary medium is watercolor. She loves the portability that gives her ability to make art anywhere and is drawn to bright, vibrant colors, often adding them to her artistic representation of a subject, emphasizing what she feels through what she sees. She is fresh from a summer in San Francisco spent live urban sketching. Over time, this practice started to feel like a form of worship for the subject she painted. She is excited to bring her learnings and growth to the urban sketching scene here in Dallas.
Nishtha believes art is a means to connect with others by highlighting the spaces and places that mean something to us, as well as a necessary means of bringing attention to issues that impact us and a beautiful means of imagining better worlds. She gives thanks to her partner, parents, family, and friends for their endless encouragement that sustains and emboldens her.
James Russell is a journalist based in Fort Worth. He writes for Arts and Culture Texas, Texas Architect, Landscape Architecture Magazine and Quorum Report.
