• Interview with Jeff Whittington on The Dallas Arts District blog

How is the largest professional NFL stadium ever built making waves in the art world and what role will art play in Super Bowl XLV? Over 3 million people have visited Cowboys Stadium since it opened in June of 2009 and many of them have enjoyed artworks by a group of internationally-known artists including Franz Ackermann, Olafur Eliasson, Mel Bochner and Teresita Fernandez – to mention just a few. At this Thursday’s installment of State of the Arts, we’ll explore the new stadium and we’ll discuss how public design and public art can transform a possibly mundane and typically predictable environment into an entirely new and fascinating territory.

Our guests will include the stadium’s principle designer Bryan K. Trubey, curator Charlie Wylie and artist Annette Lawrence, whose work is included in the collection.

Bryan K. Trubey got his first job in architecture at the age of 15. He’s now Principal and Director of the HKS Sports and Entertainment Group. Bryan’s design portfolio includes now just Cowboys Stadium, but also American Airlines Center, Rangers Ballpark in Arlington and the Liverpool FC Stadium among others. He’ll tell us what it took to make the monumental new home of the Dallas Cowboys a reality.

Annette Lawrence is a visual artist and Professor of Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design. Her work is generally related to text and information, often in response to physical space and time. We’ll talk with her about the experience of creating her site-specific piece Coin Toss for the Cowboys Stadium Art Collection.

Charles Wylie is The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and a member of the Cowboys Stadium Art Council. He has organized a number of major exhibitions, including the current exhibition Big New Field, Performance/Art, Willie Doherty: Requisite Distance, and On Kawara: 10 Tableaux and 16,952 Pages. We’ll explore the process and challenges of organizing and planning for a unique collection of this size with Charlie.

It’s happening this Thursday, Jan. 13 at the Dallas Museum of Art’s Horchow Auditorium. Details and a link for reservations are here. I hope you can make it.