It’s fair to say millions, possibly even billions, more people have heard Arnold McCuller than have heard of Arnold McCuller.

If you’ve heard the music of Phil Collins, or Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Beck — the list goes on and on — you’ve heard Mr. McCuller.

After 10 years, the Gay Head Gallery is back. This time, it is a gallery with a mission.

Megan Ottens-Sargent, the owner of the gallery, which doubles as her home, has reopened her gallery to bring back sophisticated art to an up-Island audience, but also to engage the community in her other passions: conservation and democratic participation.

Built on Stilts, the annual dance festival held at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, opened last night to begin its eight day run with a bit of drumming, belly dancing and a group of five-year-olds taking the stage fresh from their yearlong “Stiltshop” choreography class. What’s on the schedule for tonight is anyone’s guess, though, as the show never repeats itself.

Not to start on too bossy a note, but do go out and catch all five plays and musical productions of the African American Theatre Festival being performed, mostly, at the Vineyard Playhouse and running this week through early September.

The festival began this past Wednesday with Root, a one-woman play written and performed by Vanessa German and directed by Heather Arnet. The play travels from 1980s Los Angeles to the Civil Rights marches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to drug-saturated Juarez, Mexico to a battered and drenched New Orleans.