Dallas’ Flashiest Art Event Makes a Major Change: Crowd of 50,000-Plus Prompts a Move

It’s the dawn of a new day for Aurora, the biennial public art exhibit focused on light, video, and sound. The ultra popular event will return in November 2018 to illuminate Dallas, and this time it is spreading its rays beyond the Arts District.

Aurora has revealed a new location for its fifth edition, along with the theme and a new set of guest curators.

With more than 50,000 visitors attending the last installment in 2015, the event is making room to grow in 2018. Instead of being centered around Arts District institutions as it has been in the past, Aurora will now make Dallas City Hall its home base. From there, the exhibit will extend its reach throughout the entire city.

“Our aim is to be a city-wide project that expands through and beyond the scope of downtown Dallas. By shifting the central exhibition footprint, the artist will have a fresh canvas to work with, while bringing attention to an iconic public space in the city,” AURORA co-founder Joshua King said in a statement.

I.M. Pei’s iconic inverted pyramid will make a fittingly modern backdrop for Aurora 2018, which has been given the theme “Future Worlds.” Considering technological leaps and environmental and political shifts, artists are invited to create pieces which represent possible futures. The exhibit aims to “open a dialogue about how we collectively envision our Future Worlds,” and prompt viewers to “actively participate in its creation.”

The featured artists will be selected by a panel of guest curators: Justine Ludwig, senior curator at Dallas Contemporary; Dooeun Choi, art director of Da Vinci Creative 2017 and Adjunct Curator of Art Center Nabi; and Nadim Samman, co-curator/founder of Antarctic Biennale and co-director of Import Projects Berlin. The curators will choose a lineup of local, national, and international artists to contribute to the exhibit.

With three prestigious curators behind it and a new, boundless stage, the future is looking bright for Dallas’ flashiest art event.

“AURORA is a cornerstone event for the arts in North Texas,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said in a statement. “It has reshaped the art viewing experience for tens of thousands of people and shows that Dallas is a unique cultural destination that can host an international art event of this magnitude.”