KTX Biennial Names Jovanna Venegas as Inaugural Curator for Dallas’s Katy Trail
Dallas’s Katy Trail — a daily corridor for runners, commuters, and weekend strollers — is about to become the site of a newly formalized public art biennial. Organizers of the KTX Biennial have selected Jovanna Venegas, currently a curator at SculptureCenter in New York, to lead the inaugural edition, expanding a temporary public art program into a two-year cycle of commissions.
The decision is rooted in city policy: Dallas’s temporary art guidelines allow works to remain on view for up to 18 months, a timeline that organizers said naturally suggested a biennial rhythm. According to Dillard Shufeldt, the program’s recent momentum prompted a larger ambition. “We realized that to make a really significant impact, we needed to formalize the program and hire a curator,” Shufeldt said, adding that a single curatorial voice could create a more cohesive experience for people using the trail.
A committee was formed to nominate and select a curator, ultimately choosing Venegas. Shufeldt said the group aligned quickly around her proposal and approach. “There was a very clear consensus among the group that Jovanna showed a fresh and clear vision,” she said, citing Venegas’s background, network, and experience.
Venegas comes to the role after years working inside major institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she worked from 2017 to 2023. At SFMOMA and at SculptureCenter, she has emphasized commissioning new work, with past projects including those by Patricia Ayres and Elaine Cameron-Weir at SculptureCenter, and Fernando Palma Rodríguez and Liz Hernández at SFMOMA.
In speaking about the appeal of the KTX Biennial, Venegas noted that much of her career has unfolded in spaces defined by walls — and that the Katy Trail offers a different kind of curatorial problem: how art meets an audience that is moving, exercising, commuting, or simply passing through. Shufeldt described Venegas’s proposal as both rigorous and inventive, saying her excitement for a “non-traditional setting” was evident.
Venegas is now developing the inaugural artist list and the range of commissions. While outdoor sculpture will be part of the mix, she is also considering artists whose primary practices are not typically associated with public art. That could include painters producing murals, as well as performance artists whose work might “activate different parts of the trail,” she said.
The first edition does not yet have an official title, but its conceptual framework has been outlined: it will center on “the imaginative and plural ecologies framework of the forest, examining the visible and invisible dimensions of shared space,” according to a release. A key reference point is Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 short story “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” which follows a crew tasked with observing a planet entirely covered by forest.
Time, too, is part of the curatorial thinking. The Katy Trail is officially open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Venegas said she is particularly interested in how encounters with artworks might shift across the day — including commissions designed to register most strongly in the liminal hours between dusk and dawn.
“I am interested in the potential for an encounter between distinct worlds on the Katy Trail: that of the visitor and those created by artists,” Venegas said.
With Venegas at the helm, the KTX Biennial signals a broader push to treat the trail not simply as a backdrop for temporary installations, but as a civic space where contemporary art can unfold in real time — shaped by weather, light, and the unpredictable choreography of public life.
