Art in the City

Historic Fort Worth tower to light up with high-tech art for 2 nights

Pioneer Tower will light up with a high-tech art installation for two nights only.

Courtesy of Fort Worth Public Art

The 204-foot-tall Pioneer Tower at Will Rogers Memorial Center will light up as a beacon of Fort Worth art and life for two nights only this summer.

To mark its 20th year, Fort Worth Public Art — a city program run by the Arts Council of Fort Worth — will illuminate all four sides of the tower with new large-scale, high-tech media installations created from photos and memories submitted by Fort Worth residents. They'll be on display August 20-21 only and will be free to view, a release says.

The works are the creations of Los Angeles-based artist Refik Anadol and Rome- and London-based artist Quayola, who used cutting-edge artificial intelligence and data visualization technology to create their works.

"For Pioneer Tower Dreams, Refik Anadol captures and reimagines Fort Worth citizens’ memories of the city using machine learning algorithms," the release explains. "Texas Surveys: New Pointillism, Landscape Scans and Horse Paintings by Quayola explore the natural beauty of Fort Worth through what he calls 'computational paintings,' which visualize data captured from sources such as laser-scanned trees or the motion-captured movement of horses."

The groundbreaking works will premiere as the first of four major public art projects across Fort Worth, FWPA says. The Pioneer Tower project was commissioned by the City of Fort Worth, and presented in partnership with public arts organization AURORA.

“This first-of-its-kind event will celebrate Fort Worth’s collective memories and natural beauty in a big way through a marriage of art and cutting-edge technology by two of the most prominent new media artists in the world today," says Martha Peters, director of Public Art, Arts Council of Fort Worth, in the release.

The historic Pioneer Tower was refurbished in 2019, including a recreation of its iconic glass brick windows and updating of its internal lighting system. AURORA co-founders Joshua King and Shane Pennington worked with the FWPA program to ensure the tower’s infrastructure could handle the data and energy needed for large-scale projected video installations such as these, the FWPA says.

Last fall, the organization asked Fort Worth residents to submit photos and memories for something they were calling an "urban-scale interactive artwork." Submissions could be visual, textural, or both and would "contribute to a vast pool of data that the machine mind will process as the city's collective memory."

To celebrate the unveiling of the project, the Arts Council of Fort Worth and AURORA are partnering to organize a supporting exhibition of technology-based art, curated by Lauren Cross.

“The Arts Council, in partnership with AURORA, is excited to welcome the entire community to the Cultural District to experience the Pioneer Tower premiere alongside works of talented and diverse local and regional artists," says Karen Wiley, president and CEO of the Arts Council of Fort Worth.

Read more about the artists chosen for the Pioneer Tower project and view a preview of it here and here.

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Ancient Sculpture News

Fort Worth museum one of only 3 in U.S. to get rare sculpture exhibit

Lorenzo di Masi/Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Nile

A major exhibition of ancient Roman masterworks is coming to the U.S. for the first time to be viewed at only three museums — including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Called Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, it's an assemblage of works stewarded by the Torlonia Family beginning in the early-19th century, and will be installed at the Kimbell from September 14, 2025 – January 25, 2026.

As part of the Foundation’s mission to showcase these historical works to the public, the exhibition will premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 through June 29, before traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Its third stop will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, from March 14 - July 19, 2026.

The Torlonia Collection was established during the course of the 19th century by the Franco-Italian banker Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his son Alessandro, then handed down over generations, eventually growing into the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures.

Today, the Torlonia Foundation represents the culmination of the Family’s continued passion for art. Created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017), the Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia.

In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) created a museum to house and exhibit the Family’s holdings, which was open to small groups until its closure at the onset of World War II. The sculptures remained unseen by the public from that time until the Foundation’s first exhibition at the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2020. That was followed by a stint at the Louvre, the first presentation of the collection outside of Rome, where it has drawn more than 600,000 visitors to date, an unprecedented feat.

The exhibit
The curators of Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection are Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and The Museum Box. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been restored by the Foundation with the support of Bvlgari.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, edited by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff, with essays by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis.

The North American presentation will feature 58 highlights from the Torlonia Collection, including 24 newly restored works that have not been on view in nearly a century. The sculptures date from approximately the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, with the majority of the works dating to the High Imperial period (1st–2nd centuries CE). Highlights include examples of the most emblematic genres of ancient marble sculpture, acquired by the Torlonia Family from the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavations made on the Family’s own estates throughout Italy.

“The Foundation is excited to be sharing the Torlonia Collection with audiences in North America for the first time. This exceptional group of ancient sculptures is a testament to the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Rome, as well as the vision and passion of multiple generations of the Torlonia Family,” said Alessandro Poma Murialdo, President of the Torlonia Foundation.

The presentation is organized thematically in six sections, featuring sculptures found on the Torlonia Family’s properties in Rome and the surrounding suburbs and their estate in Porto, Portugal, as well as a number of exceptional sarcophagi (stone coffins), among the largest sculpted works in marble to survive from ancient Rome.

The tour reinforces the work of the Foundation to advance the appreciation and understanding of this unparalleled collection and the rich cultural heritage it represents. The Foundation’s mission is carried out through a continuous joint effort between the public and private sectors, including with the cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Foundation is supported by a longstanding collaboration with Bvlgari as the principal sponsor of the restoration project since its inception in Rome and throughout the global tour, and Chiomenti, who has lent invaluable support to the Foundation’s core activities.

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