Wyland said in a lawsuit filed on Monday that FIFA’s covering of his mural “Ocean Life” violated the Visual Artists Rights Act, a U.S. law that protects artists from having their works defaced, and requested at least US$25 million in damages.
FIFA said in a statement on Tuesday that it has “no involvement in this whatsoever and refers all inquiries on this matter to the host city committee.” Dallas’ World Cup organizing committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
“This case is about integrity of the artwork and of the law,” Wyland’s attorney, Andrea Perez of Carrington Coleman Sloman & Blumenthal, said in a statement. “VARA exists so that culturally significant pieces are treated with dignity and care.”
Wyland painted his mural, also known as the “Whaling Wall”, in 1999, depicting whales, dolphins and other sea life on the side of a downtown Dallas building.
Dallas is one of 16 host cities for the FIFA World Cup beginning later this month. The lawsuit said that the city’s organizing committee painted over the mural in May without contacting Wyland.
“In their zeal to capitalize on the international attention on Dallas during the FIFA World Cup, Defendants hastily and irrevocably destroyed a civic landmark,” the lawsuit said. “Though FIFA claims they were working to develop art for the host city, in truth, they defaced an historic fixture of the host city.”
A spokesperson for the building’s owner, Slate Asset Management, said the committee had told it that a local artist would create a new installation on the wall and that Wyland had been made aware of the new work. Slate is also a defendant in the case.
The case is Wyland v. Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, No. 3:26-cv-01794.
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