A 12-foot-tall bronze hand will take Big Tex’s spot at Fair Park as part of the FIFA World Cup festivities this summer.
The hand, holding a globe embellished with license plates from around the world, reflects the city’s creativity, culture and energy, Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said in a news release.
“By bringing together art, community, and a global event of this scale, we are creating an experience that celebrates Dallas while connecting us to an international audience,” she said.
Related: Almost $1 million spent on downtown Dallas upgrades for World Cup
Fair Park is expected to host a 34-day fan festival in South Dallas, welcoming thousands of soccer fans. The temporary installation — titled The World is Ours by artists Risk Rock and Mesplé — is one of 11 projects supported by $30,000 grants for World Cup host cities. It will be surrounded by informational signage in languages spoken by countries represented in Dallas matches, according to an announcement from the National Endowment for the Arts, which awarded the funding.
The grants will support entertainment and educational programming across the country from May to the end of the year. The Dallas sculpture is currently on view at Gallery DeFi in West Dallas. Video of the sculpture’s assembly and its spinning globe is on Instagram.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.