Preservation – Illicit Cultural Property

A Whale of a Moral Rights Claim in Dallas

Aerial view of a cityscape featuring tall skyscrapers, a large blue mural on a building, and a parking lot with several parked cars. — Julio Cortez/Associated Press

A large mural depicting dolphins swimming in the ocean, located on the side of a building. The mural showcases a blue water scene with clouds and marine life, set against an urban backdrop with a parking lot filled with cars. — History of the Dallas, Texas Wyland Whaling Wall 82
-Ocean Life
Whaling wall 82
Texas Utilities Building
505 Akard Street Dallas, Texas
Back: 164 Feet Long x 82 Feet High
Side: 50 Feet Long x 78 Feet High
Dedicated April 16, 1999

For nearly three decades, Wyland’s Whaling Wall 82, also known as Ocean Life, covered two sides of a downtown Dallas parking garage at 505 N. Akard Street. Painted in 1999, the mural showed blue whales and other marine life swimming across a landlocked city. Then, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, the whales began to disappear under blue paint.

The plan, apparently, was to replace Wyland’s mural with World Cup-related images. Dallas and North Texas are preparing to host nine matches, more than any other World Cup host city. The problem is what had to be erased to make the gesture possible.

The reporting has been especially grim because the loss seems to have resulted less from one dramatic act of hostility than from a chain of institutional shrugging. Someone identified the wall as a good site. Someone noted that the mural was old. Someone checked whether it was part of the City of Dallas public art collection. It was not. Someone apparently assumed that was enough. And then, as Robert Wilonsky wrote in the Dallas Morning News, “someone said: Here’s a wall you can probably paint over. And because no one else said: No.”

Wyland says he was not consulted before the work was painted over. His lawyers have reportedly issued a cease-and-desist letter invoking the Visual Artists Rights Act, the federal moral rights statute that protects some works of visual art from intentional destruction, distortion, mutilation, or modification. The legal questions will turn on facts that are not yet fully public: whether there was any waiver, what agreements governed the original installation, who controlled the wall, and whether the mural qualifies as a work of recognized stature.

But if public recognition matters, the reaction to the erasure is itself part of the story. A work does not have to be in a city collection to matter to a city.

That distinction is important. Public art is not only the art a city formally owns. It is also the art a public comes to know. A mural can become part of a place even if it sits on private property.

The World Cup angle makes the whole episode sharper. Mega-events arrive wrapped in the language of unity, celebration, legacy, and global connection. They also arrive with deadlines, sponsors, temporary beautification, and a tendency to flatten local meaning into marketable spectacle. Cities are asked to show off for outsiders. Too often, that means clearing away the awkward, faded, beloved, or locally specific thing and replacing it with something smoother.

There is also a wider unease surrounding the U.S. hosting of the World Cup this year. Reports suggest that hotel bookings in many U.S. host cities are softer than expected. AP reported that hotel demand has been lighter than anticipated in most of the eleven U.S. host cities, with operators pointing to international travel concerns, visa delays, high ticket prices, and transit costs. Al Jazeera, citing an AHLA survey, reported that many hotel operators saw bookings below initial forecasts, with visa barriers and geopolitical concerns among the cited reasons.

That matters because the World Cup is supposed to be an invitation. Yet the United States is hosting it at a moment when many people have good reason to ask what kind of invitation is being extended.

Immigration enforcement is part of that anxiety. The federal government has reportedly left open the possibility that ICE activity could occur around World Cup events. And this tournament is arriving after a the brutality of immigration enforcement in which the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis became symbols of state violence.

So when Dallas paints over a beloved mural to make room for World Cup imagery, the episode lands in an already uneasy atmosphere. It is not only about marine conservation. It is about the strange promise that a mega-event will showcase local culture while the machinery of preparation helps erase it.

There were obvious alternatives. Caitlin Clark at D Magazine asked the simplest question: why not use a vinyl banner? The World Cup lasts 39 days. The mural had previously been covered by advertising and later re-emerged. A temporary covering would have allowed Dallas to celebrate the tournament without permanently destroying a work that had become part of the city’s visual fabric.

Instead, Dallas now has a legal controversy, an angry artist, national attention, and a half-erased mural. Organizers have said that a portion of Wyland’s mural will be preserved as a tribute. But preserving a remnant after painting over the work is a strange kind of tribute. It is a bit like knocking down a historic building and saving a doorknob.

This story may become an important VARA dispute. It may tell us something about murals, private property, public memory, and the continuing importance of moral rights in the United States. But even before the legal issues are resolved, the cultural lesson is clear enough.

If a city wants to host the world, it should begin by paying attention to what its own people already value. The whales were not just old paint. They were part of Dallas’s public memory. And in trying to manufacture a legacy for a global event, the city may have destroyed one it already had.

Caitlin Clark, The Downtown Dallas Whale Mural Drama, Explained (updated May 18), D Magazine (last visited May 21, 2026).

Dallas Express, Cease-and-Desist Issued As Crews Cover Dallas Landmark Whale Mural For World Cup, Dallas Express (May 20, 2026).

Jesus Jiménez, A Beloved Whale Mural in Dallas Is Painted Over Ahead of the World Cup, The New York Times (May 19, 2026).

Robert Wilonsky, All the Mistakes that Led to the Extinction of Wyland’s Dallas Whale Mural, Dallas Morning News (May 18, 2026).

Jamie Stengle, An Outcry Erupts as a Whale Mural Beloved by Many in Dallas is Replaced with Art for the World Cup, AP News (May 19, 2026).

Urgent Legal Battle: Wyland Fights Dallas Mural Paint-Over, NewsRadio 1080 KRLD (last visited May 21, 2026).

Philip Marcelo, U.S. Hotel Operators Say Promised Boon from Hosting World Cup Hasn’t Materialized Yet, AP News (May 12, 2026).

AFP, Low U.S. Hotel Bookings Paint Grim Hospitality Picture at the World Cup, Al Jazeera (May 6, 2026).

Melissa Hellmann, Eight People Have Died in Dealings with ICE So Far in 2026. These Are Their Stories, The Guardian (Jan. 28, 2026).

Maanvi Singh & agencies, ICE Officer Charged over Shooting of Venezuelan Man in Minnesota, The Guardian (May 18, 2026).

Reuters, Minnesota Officials Charge ICE Agent in Shooting of Venezuelan Immigrant, Reuters (May 18, 2026).

At least they left most of the art alone

Congress Holds Joint Session To Ratify 2020 Presidential Election — Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

On Tuesday a terrorist mob of hate-filled buffoons and strong men managed in a low brow, comical, yet utterly frightening way to break into the Capitol building of the United States. The seat of the U.S. Congress was knocked out of commission for hours on Tuesday. Amid the threats to members of Congress, their staff, security, press and others, the lawlessness was a scary opportunity for looters to make off with art and artifacts. So far it seems the major works of art in the building did not suffer any serious harm.

Sarah Bahr reported for the New York Times that the most serious damage appeared to be contained to:

A 19th-century marble bust of former President Zachary Taylor was flecked with what appeared to be blood. A picture frame was left lying on the floor, the image gone.
The photos and videos, some of them taken inside by the rioters themselves, were startling. One man crammed a framed photo of the Dalai Lama into his backpack, while another smoked marijuana in a room with maps of Oregon on the wall. A man in a leather jacket ripped up a scroll with Chinese characters.

Barbara A. Wolanin, a former curator for the Architect of the Capitol noted that while the major works of art appear to be mostly unharmed, the mob of terrorists “had no respect for any of these things . . . That’s what’s really scary.”

Offices were ransacked. Windows were smashed. And a small memorial to the late John Lewis was desecrated. Much of the loss and damage will now be up to the reported hundreds of Federal attorneys and investigators to determine in the coming weeks. For now American democracy remains the laughing stock of the world.

Sarah Bahr, Curators Scour Capitol for Damage to the Building or Its Art, The New York Times (Jan. 7, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/arts/design/us-capitol-art-damage.html.

Jack Brewster, John Lewis Tribute ‘Destroyed’ During Pro-Trump Mob Takeover Of Capitol, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/06/signs-podiums-tv-equipment-trump-supporters-loot-and-destroy-during-capitol-hill-takeover/?sh=1060bcea1d7c (last visited Jan. 8, 2021).

Gareth Harris & Anny Shaw, Storming of US Capitol: Art World Condemns Police Hypocrisy in pro-Trump Riot, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/washington-capitol-trump-artists-react (last visited Jan. 8, 2021).

Erasing a Remnant of Slave History to Development outside Houston

A large Sugar purgery operated by one of Texas’ most brutal slaveowners at the Arcola Plantation, now near a master-planned suburb.

In the United States, historic preservation often hinges on the wishes of the landowner. Unless a site has been designated as a historic site by State or Federal authorities, preservation happens at the whim of a property owner. That legal regime means that some historic sites may be lost, especially if they force us to confront uncomfortable truths about our past. Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Lisa Gray walks through the history of the Arcola Plantation, and reports how its preservation may be in doubt due to a nearby master-planned subdivision.

The remains of sugar plantations have special historic significance, notes James Sidbury, a Rice professor who studies the history of race and slavery. “There just weren’t as many of those,” Sidbury said. “So blocking the ability to look at those things is a bigger blow to what we know about slavery in the U.S. than if it were a cotton plantation or a tobacco plantation.” The plantation where Sienna now stands wasn’t called “Sienna Plantation.” It was called Arcola. And it was both one of the most valuable and most brutal plantations in Texas. Its owner, Jonathan Dawson Waters, left Alabama for the Republic of Texas in 1840, and began amassing the land where he’d eventually grow cotton and sugarcane. By 1860, Arcola was one of the largest plantations in Texas, and Waters was the richest person in Fort Bend County. According to the 1860 Census, he owned 216 slaves, which made him the third-largest slaveowner in Texas. He could do much as he pleased . . . .Heavy work and inadequate food meant that sugar-plantations slaves were, “compared with other working-age slaves in the United States, far less able to resist the common and life-threatening diseases of dirt and poverty,” he wrote.

Lisa Gray, Hidden in Fort Bend’s Upscale Sienna: A Rare Plantation Building Where Slaves Made Sugar., Houston Chronicle, Oct. 23, 2019, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/article/fort-bend-last-sugarhouse-plantation-slavery-14556046.php [https://perma.cc/236R-GH99].

Student note on Confederate Monuments in North Carolina

‘”The monument was erected in honor of the 321 men from Alexander County who lost their lives in the Civil War. It is a single granite block 7 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 8 inches thick with two small circles above the front inscription containing pairs of crossed confederate battle flags.”
Image courtesy of Commemorative landscapes of N. Carolina.

Kasi E. Wahlers has published an interesting student article in the North Carolina Law Review titled “North Carolina’s Heritage Protection Act: Cementing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina’s Landscape”. It takes up North Carolina’s handling of remnants of public monuments aimed at remembering and commemorating some ugly aspects of its past.

From the Abstract:

Even in 2015, the North Carolina landscape is densely populated with Confederate monuments, appearing in more than half of the state’s one hundred counties. The state has more monuments honoring the Civil War than any other event, with five Civil War monuments for every World War II monument. Most of these structures were erected between 1890 and 1930 and many are located on public property, commonly found in and around courthouses, town squares, graveyards, and University campuses. In July of 2015, North Carolina enacted the Heritage Protection Act (“HPA”). This law severely restricts the removal, relocation, or alteration of any monument located on public property. While neutral on its face, North Carolina’s Heritage Protection Act was enacted for the purpose of protecting Confederate monuments.

This Recent Development argues that the North Carolina Heritage Protection Act creates a lack of accountability on behalf of the N.C. General Assembly, usurps powers of local governments, and is amorphously vague as to what objects it applies to. Clarification of the statutory language by the General Assembly as well as a provision allowing for the erection of plaques that contextualize these monuments within local history is needed. Analysis proceeds in three parts. Part I of this Recent Development briefly sketches the propagation of Heritage Protection Acts across the South, outlines the North Carolina Heritage Protection Act, and highlights ways the North Carolina statute differs from other states. Part II discusses the confusing nature of this statute and analyzes legislative history to offer insight as to: (1) what role the North Carolina Historical Commission plays, if any, in deciding to permanently remove or relocate monuments; (2) whether this statute applies to county or city owned monuments; and (3) what constitutes a “display of permanent character.” Finally, Part III argues that this statute is in need of clarification and a provision that provides for plaques that contextualize these monuments within their local history. A brief conclusion follows.

Wahlers, Kasi E., Recent development. North Carolina’s Heritage Protection Act: cementing Confederate monuments in North Carolina’s landscape. 94 N.C. L. Rev. 2176-2200 (2016).

New National Monument Proposal for the Bears Ears

The proposed Bears Ears national Monument would protect over 100,000 archaeological sites

A coalition of Native Americans has formed an Inter-Tribal Coalition to promote the designation of 1.9 million acres in Utah as a National Monument. The area contains granaries, rock art, burial sites, and many other important natural and historic sites. So its not surprising then that 26 tribes support protecting the area, which gets its name from these the two buttes which resemble a large bear. This area was described beautifully in Craig Childs’ excellent work on archaeology and heritage in the four corners region. Designation of the massive area would protect scores of ancient sites, burial sites, and pieces of rock art. An area which has suffered repeatedly at the hands of amateur archaeologists and later illicit looting.

President Obama seems to be taking a more open approach to the designation of the lands than Bill Clinton took when designating the nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. A July public hearing allowed members of the public a chance to voice their opinion to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell for nearly four hours. Writing about that meeting for High Country News, Jonathan Thompson reported:

Today’s crowd contains as many brown faces as it does white ones, a refreshing change from other such gatherings in the past. The land in question is an important part of contemporary Ute and Navajo history, and members of those tribes continue to use it for wood-, herb- and piñon-gathering. The pueblos here — including the Bluff Great House that’s just a stone’s throw from today’s hearing — were inhabited on-and-off from the 9th to the 13th centuries by the ancestors of today’s Zuni, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo people. And the Bears Ears and other landmarks on this landscape are considered to be important religious sites.

That, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye tells Jewell in the hearing, is why his tribal government supports a national monument. “We relate to them (the Bears Ears) like an Anglo relates to a family member,” he says. Begaye’s tribe, along with the Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Ute tribe, overcame historic antagonism to join together to form the coalition that’s pushing for the monument. That’s unprecedented, as is their proposed management structure: a committee of eight, including one representative from each tribe, and one representative each from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

“It’s been far too long that us Natives have not been at the table,” says Malcolm Lehi, the Ute Mountain Ute council representative from the White Mesa community, just up the road from Bluff. “Here we are today inviting ourselves to the table. We’re making history.”

The proposal and coalition has the support of six of the seven Navajo chapters in Utah, at least two-dozen additional tribes and the National Congress of American Indians, along with a host of environmental groups and more than 700 archaeologists.

But there is a long history of entrenched private property owners in the southwest that often resist these efforts, as demonstrated by Utah’s two members of the House: Continue reading “New National Monument Proposal for the Bears Ears”

Profile of Syrian Preservation Group

“A human life doesn’t have much value without culture to go with it” says Markus Hilgert, director of the Pergamon Museum. He’s interviewed in a CNN profile of Heritage for Peace, a group working to document the destruction taking place there. The group walks a delicate line, trying not to take a stand in the dispute. The group has limited funding and works with a number of volunteers with founder Isber Sabrine:

A 29-year-old archaeologist from a village near the Mediterranean coast in western Syria, Sabrine is using modern technology to trace and document the looting and destruction of his country’s ancient heritage.

Working from Berlin, he runs a network in Syria of around 150 volunteers — archaeologists, architects, students and simply concerned citizens — who often pose as antiquities buyers to see what has been stolen in the course of Syria’s now more than four-year uprising. He communicates with them via Skype when the Internet in Syria is working, which isn’t often.

“They go to the locals and they say look, we are interested. They cannot buy, but at least they make photos and they send us photos,” says Sabrine. “Like this we have a list of looted materials from Syria.”

That list is shared with law enforcement, auction houses and collectors. CNN asked if we could publish some of those photographs — we saw statues, mosaics and coins — but Sabrine declined for fear the photos might expose the volunteers.

After years of chaos, the market for stolen antiquities is flooded, and dealers are holding back some of their most valuable items. “We know that the most important objects don’t go to market now,” says Sabrine. “The big dealers are waiting, maybe two, three or four years, and then when the opportunity is right, they will sell.”

Ben Wedeman, Syria’s Struggle to Save the Past – CNN.com, CNN.

5Pointz Suit Continues

The legal battle over 5Pointz has entered a new phase this week, as a complaint by some of the artists whose works were destroyed when the building was whitewashed has been filed in Federal Court. Though this may seem to be a new suit or new proceeding, it really should be viewed as a continuation of the dispute that has been ongoing since 2013 and earlier. Only instead of asking a court to prevent the destruction of the works at issue, now the artists are seeking compensation for the actual destruction of the works when they were whitewashed. Nicholas O’Donnell has kindly posted this new complaint on his blog, and he argues that one interesting thing to watch in the dispute, is the measure of damages: Continue reading “5Pointz Suit Continues”

Kersel on the ‘Archaeological Curation Crisis’

Morag Kersel, an assistant Professor in the Anthropology department at DePaul has published an article in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies titled “Storage Wars: Solving the Archaeological Curation Crisis?“. She has posted the piece online at academia.edu. From the abstract:

Whether sponsored by academic institutions, governments, international agencies, or private landowners,the results of archaeological investigations are the same: the production of knowledge and an accumulation of things. The material manifestations (artifacts and sam-ples) and the accompanying daily notes, digital records,maps, photographs, and plans together comprise a comprehensive record of the past. Once these items havebeen amassed, they are deposited in dig houses, maga-zines, museums, repositories, storage containers, andsometimes in personal basements and garages to be heldin perpetuity. Across the globe, storage (here implyingcuration and permanent care) is one of the most pressing issues facing archaeology today. Te following examines the curation crisis and some of the traditional and inno-vative solutions to the storage wars, arguing that rather than something that is viewed as a time-consuming,costly afterthought; curation should be an integral part of archaeological praxis.

“Yamatane” and temporary art

Yusuke Asai, "Yamatane", Rice University, Houston 2014. — Yusuke Asai, “Yamatane”, Rice University, Houston 2014.

So much effort goes in to thinking about where art belongs, how it should be preserved and conserved. So in many ways I can be guilty of taking the idea of preservation for granted. But more attention should be paid to thinking through what exactly preservation means. After all, preservation comes with costs. And thinking about how much does not get preserved, and how much effort it takes to preserve art and sites can seem overwhelming. Which is why it can be refreshing to just enjoy some art every now and then. Yusuke Asai, a Japanese painter created a massive installation at Rice University titled “yamatane” (Japanese for mountain seed). But you can’t see it any more, it has been “deinstalled”, which was the idea all along. As a result he gently forces the viewer to enjoy and take in the work while you can.

Asai's soil samples from Houston and Texas — Asai’s soil samples from Houston and Texas

He uses dirt and earth as a medium. In Houston he had Rice students and volunteers collect soil samples from around Houston and Texas, which he used to create 27 different shades.

Of his works he says:

I do not decide on a story or meaning before I start painting. Imagery of figures and creatures comes to me in the moent. Fox, bird, cat, and sunshine – everything has a role; parts disappear and something is added. The world accepts it and keeps changing. I begin each work thinking of the countless small things that come together to make a larger world. I choose to use the earth as a medium because I can find dirt anywhere in the world and do not need special materials. Dirt is by nature very different than materials sold in art stores! Seeds grow in it and it is home to any insects and microorganisms. It is a “living” medium.

Continue reading ““Yamatane” and temporary art”

Perhaps art and archaeology should work together

Detail of a petroglyph in the White River Narrows in Nevada

Central Nevada’s Garden Valley is home to wildlife, Native American rock shelters, the White River Narrows archaeological sites, and ancient trails used by the Shoshone and Paiute peoples. In September Senator Harry Reid introduced legislation to put over 800,000 acres off-limits to energy exploration and exploitation there. The Bill has been referred to Committeee, and can be tracked here. Though Sen. Reid’s office did not respond to initial press questions about the Bill, setting aside this land must hinge on protecting these natural and archaeological resources. But the area is also home to Michael Heizer’s ongoing City project. Continue reading “Perhaps art and archaeology should work together”