Texas’s first biennial dedicated to public art will launch next year along Dallas’s Katy Trail, the 3.5-mile corridor that runs through the city's Uptown and Oak Lawn neighbourhoods. The landscaped route for pedestrians and cyclists follows a former railroad bed and attracts around four million visitors annually.
The first edition of the KTX Biennial will open in spring 2027, timed to coincide with the Dallas Art Fair in April. Each biennial presentation will remain on view for around 18 months and be free for all. A launch event is planned during next month’s edition of the fair.
The open-air exhibition will be curated by Jovanna Venegas, a curator at SculptureCenter in New York City, and will feature nearly a dozen works by contemporary artists from around the world, including both existing and newly commissioned projects.
Half Stepping Hot Stepper (2016) by Eddie Martinez on the Katy Trail in 2024. Photo: Kevin Tadora
The inaugural edition’s curatorial theme is inspired by "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971), a science-fiction short story by Ursula K. Le Guin that follows human explorers sent to investigate an alien planet, only to realise they are connected to its natural environment.
“I wanted to translate that idea into public space, to imagine the trail as a site of encounter between visitors and works by artists whose visual language already centres otherworldly beings, creatures or ecologies,” Venegas said in a statement. “In that meeting, the strange or unfamiliar hopefully becomes a source of curiosity and interconnectedness.”
A sculpture by Iván Argote along the Katy Trail in 2024. Photo: Kevin Tadora
This will not be the Katy Trail's first outing as a public art venue. Since the launch of Katy Trail Art in 2021, the programme has commissioned works by artists including Iván Argote, Hidenori Ishii, Will Boone and Jeff Gibbons.
“We’ve seen firsthand that the community is not only open to contemporary art in this setting, but genuinely excited by it,” Amanda Shufeldt, the director of Katy Trail Art, said in a statement. “That sustained enthusiasm gave us the confidence to think bigger and more structurally about the programme’s future.”
Dallas is already a hub for art and culture in the southern US, home to the Dallas Art Fair—one of the country’s largest independent commercial art events—as well as the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Contemporary, Nasher Sculpture Center and significant private collections, including those shown at the Green Family Art Foundation and The Warehouse.
“A public art biennial here ensures that access to contemporary art doesn’t depend on stepping inside a museum. It meets people where they already are—walking, running, gathering—and invites unexpected encounters with new ideas,” Shufeldt said.