DALLAS (AP) -Football fans waiting in concession lines this fall at the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium will be able to walk away with more than just a beer and a hot dog: They can also get a museum-quality art experience.
Fourteen contemporary works commissioned for the stadium will be displayed everywhere from entries to staircases to the sprawling walls above food stands. Most of the works will be in place by the first regular-season game on Sept. 20.
As plans for the nearly $1.2 billion stadium shaped up, contemporary art seemed a natural fit for the sleek, high-tech building, said Gene Jones, the wife of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
nity.”
Looming over a main staircase in the stadium, Gary Simmons’ “Blue Field Explosions” depicts two forceful white blasts against a blue background. On the main staircase at the opposite end of the stadium, splashes of color greet visitors in Franz Ackermann’s “Coming Home (Meet Me) At the Waterfall.”
“I bring five floors together as one unit,” Ackermann said.
Olafur Eliasson’s “Moving stars takes time” has been installed from the ceiling inside an entryway, its stainless steel parts floating overhead.
Michael Auping is chief curator at the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth and a member of the art council formed to offer advice on the project. He said part of the project’s significance comes from the way the art and architecture come together.
“There isn’t anything like this anywhere,” Auping said.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello noted that other stadiums have statues or displays pertaining to their teams, but not art like this.
“I think this as far as we know is very unique,” Aiello said.
ncerts to tours of the stadium.
Some of the artists have taken their cue from the battles that will be waged on the field.
Motivated by the psychology of the sport, Mel Bochner said he proposed working with the word “win.” Work will begin next week on his piece, which will be a series of capitalized words, beginning with “WIN! VANQUISH! CONQUER! CLOBBER!”
“That’s what football is about,” he said. “It seemed to me that that captured the ethos of a crowd entering the stadium.”
“I think the Dallas Cowboys are to be congratulated for embarking on this program, which will put a lot of new eyeballs on a lot of new art,” Bochner said.
As artist Terry Haggerty worked on a painting that will resemble a giant red and white striped wave above a concession stand, he said that after seeing the “monstrousness of the space” he wanted his piece to distort it a bit.
“It’s going to be a bit of a fisheye lens,” he said.
Charles Wylie, a curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art and member of the arts council, said that the project is exciting because it gives people the chance to experience art outside of a museum.
“I think it really opens up the definition of art for people,” Wylie said.
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