For the past two years, the Guild Hall Members Exhibition has allowed a peek behind the curtain just after the appraisal of the winners has finished. On Friday, this year’s jurist, Susan Thompson, an associate curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, offered insights into her methodology in a forthright and thoughtful way.

Xenophobia, at its rotten core, is ignorance. And ignorance, as Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty” has taught children since its 1877 publication, is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness.

The Southampton Cultural Center is offering three-course dinner-theater packages with “Sherlock’s Secret Life,” its current production from Boots on the Ground Theater. This critic’s advice: Skip the dessert course, because the play is a delightful and satisfying confection.