The KTX Biennial, a new contemporary public art biennial along Dallas’ Katy Trail, will be launching its inaugural edition in Spring 2027. The KTX Biennial is Texas’ first biennial of its kind dedicated to public art and provides an open-air platform for engaging with inspiring contemporary artworks, free and accessible to all, organizers said.

Initiated by Friends of the Katy Trail Executive Director Amy Bean and Katy Trail Art Director Amanda Dillard Shufeldt, the inaugural edition invites New York–based curator Jovanna Venegas to organize a presentation of nearly a dozen existing and newly commissioned works by living artists from around the world.

“The KTX Biennial grows directly out of our belief that the Katy Trail belongs to everyone,” Bean said in a statement. “By bringing ambitious contemporary art into an open-air setting, free and accessible to all, we’re inviting both longtime visitors and first-time audiences to experience the Trail in an entirely new way.”

“This Biennial strengthens the trail’s role not only as a place for recreation, but also as a space for creativity, reflection, and shared discovery,” Bean added.

Unique outdoor art installation

Displayed along the 3.5-mile former railroad corridor running through Dallas’ Uptown, Knox, and Highland Park neighborhoods, the KTX Biennial invites the Katy Trail’s two million annual visitors, along with new audiences, to explore and interact with art from today’s most compelling artists.

Building on the Katy Trail’s existing public art program—which has featured work of Iván Argote, Eddie Martinez, Will Boone, Nic Nicosia, Carolyn Salas, and more—the Biennial carefully integrates art into the natural environment, creates new avenues for discovery for local and national audiences, and strengthens Dallas’ standing as an international art destination.

The KTX Biennial is unique initiative in the United States, organizers said. The rotating outdoor exhibition is designed from the ground up as a public-space biennial, where the urban environment itself serves as the primary venue and the natural environment directs exploration, inviting audiences to discover and experience contemporary art on their own terms.

Dallas as ‘a hub’ for contemporary art

This model positions Dallas among leading global cities that activate civic space at scale with public art. Its reach, however, extends far beyond the confines of the Katy Trail and its connected neighborhoods. Through educational programs, public activities, panel conversations, and partnerships with local institutions and organizations, the Biennial is designed to go beyond the Katy Trail installations, building lasting infrastructure for community, connection, and engagement, organizers said.

With the inaugural edition set to open in Spring 2027, the KTX Biennial establishes a new cultural landmark for Dallas—an international platform rooted in local community, natural landscape, and shared public space.

“The KTX Biennial brings an extraordinary level of artistic rigor and ambition to the Katy Trail and the wider Dallas metroplex,” Shufeldt said. “Under the curatorial vision of Jovanna Venegas for our first edition, we’re inviting artists to present bold public artworks that shape contemporary discourse internationally. The KTX Biennial signals Dallas’s strength as a hub for the discovery of meaningful contemporary art and underscores our capacity to commission and present work at the highest global standard.”

More on the curator and the inaugural exhibit

The debut edition of the KTX Biennial is curated by Jovanna Venegas, a curator at SculptureCenter in New York. Over the past decade—in roles at SculptureCenter, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and as advisor to the 2022 Whitney Biennial—Venegas has built an international reputation for exhibiting and commissioning major works by living artists and championing voices at key moments in their careers. Recent notable exhibitions and commissions include works by Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Mario Ayala, rafa esparza, Guadalupe Rosales, Cathy Lu, Alexa West, ASMA, Luana Vitra, Elaine Cameron-Weir, Yu Ji, and Patricia Ayres, among many more.

“I’m thrilled to inaugurate the KTX Biennial with the teams at Friends of the Katy Trail and Katy Trail Art. Dallas is such a vibrant city with socially diverse communities and an active cultural landscape, and I cherish that the trail has an existing community of users and visitors,” Venegas said.

The inaugural KTX Biennial is conceived around the imaginative ecological framework of the forest, examining the visible and invisible dimensions of shared space. Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s short science fiction story Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1971), the Biennial draws from narratives that explore reciprocity, intimacy, and coexistence in the mutual unfolding of worlds. The inaugural installation considers how we might perceive otherworldly ecosystems, transforming the trail into a site of unexpected discovery.

Featuring locally and internationally recognized artists and emerging voices, some who will show work in Dallas for the first time, the biennial activates the landscape as a space for mutual encounter.

“Having mostly worked within institutional settings, it’s invigorating to share the many imaginative worlds that artists open up for us within the existing natural landscape of the Katy Trail,” Venegas said. “I hope this encounter with art invites curiosity toward the unfamiliar and our shared existence.”

Don’t miss what’s next. Subscribe to Dallas Innovates.

Track Dallas-Fort Worth’s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.