When the Miami Dolphins open the doors to their newly renovated (and renamed) Hard Rock Stadium for the first home game of the season on September 25, the team will also unveil a dozen murals by street artists from around the world, reports the New York Times.
Nine artists have spent the past few weeks creating new work: Logan Hicks, Jen Stark, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Dasic Fernández, 1010, How & Nosm, Momo, and CRASH. Their designs will join three murals created last year at the stadium by the London Police, POSE, and Case. Five additional murals will be painted in the coming months, for a total of about 30,000 square feet of art.
The art project was commissioned in secret by Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross, alongside Goldman Global Arts, a new branch of the real estate developer Goldman Properties. The renovations and rebranding are said to have cost $500 million.
Dasic Fernández creates a mural at the Miami Dolphin’s Hard Rock Stadium. Courtesy of Martha Cooper/Goldman Global Arts.
The murals are part of Ross’s efforts to transform the team’s home into “a major entertainment center,” he told the Times. “We were renovating this stadium to be something more than just a football stadium.”
Hard Rock Stadium joins other football arenas in embracing the visual arts, including the San Francisco 49er’s Levi’s Stadium and the AT&T Stadium, home to the Dallas Cowboys Art Program.
HoxxoH’s mural project at the Miami Marine Stadium. Courtesy of photographer Diana Larrea/Friends of Miami Marine Stadium Mural Project.
Street art has also played an important role in ongoing efforts to restore the Miami Marine Stadium, a Modernist gem of a water sports arena designed by Hilaro Candela, a 28-year-old Cuban immigrant, in 1963. During the 2014 edition of Miami Art Week, local, national, and international street artists joined forces to create six murals for a pop-up exhibition titled the “Art | History Mural Project.”
Earlier this year, according to the Miami New Times, Miami street artist Douglas “HoxxoH” Hoekzema created a large-scale mural on the stadium’s seats, ahead of a fundraising campaign from Heineken. The seats are being sold to help raise money for restoration of the structure, which was condemned following Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
A mural by Assume Vivid Astro Focus at the Miami Dolphin’s Hard Rock Stadium. Courtesy of Martha Cooper/Goldman Global Arts.