05/19/2026
FIFA-on-whale crime has been committed in downtown Dallas. The victim: "Whaling Wall 82" (aka "Ocean Life"), an 82-foot-high mural painted on an Akard Street building in 1999 by conservationist and artist Robert Wyland (known simply as Wyland professionally). The most likely culprit(s): Downtown Dallas Inc., the North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, and Slate Asset Management, the Toronto-based owner of 505 N. Akard, which allowed the commercial building's mural to be painted over to make way for a World Cup mural. The City of Dallas claims Wyland was informed of the change. Wyland says he was not. The Dallas mural is not the first of Wyland’s 100 “whaling walls” to be covered up in the decades since he completed the project, but it’s certainly caused the biggest uproar. “We suck the soul out of everything,” Kacey Musgraves wrote in an Instagram Story this week.
