In May 2026, a familiar piece of downtown Dallas disappeared. For nearly thirty years, Robert Wyland's Whaling Wall #82 "Ocean Life," an 82-foot mural of breaching whales, had been part of the Dallas cityscape. Then it was painted over to make way for FIFA World Cup promotional artwork. Wyland says he learned about it after the fact and responded with a $25 million lawsuit under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), a 1990 American law that protects artists of "recognized sta