Art festival Aurora returns in 2018 with new focus: Dallas City Hall 

Aurora, the public art event dedicated to turning Dallas into "an open-air, urban playground of new media art," according to its website, will shine a light on Dallas City Hall when the festival returns in November 2018.

The free festival showcases art via light, sound and video, in ways that allow the public to interact with the colorful, dramatic works.

Aurora started in 2010 by artists Shane Pennington and Joshua King and consultant Veletta Forsythe Lill. The Dallas Morning News has been a media partner in the past.

Whereas Aurora in 2015 was situated in the Dallas Arts District, the 2018 festival is expected to be a "citywide project," King says, with Dallas City Hall designed by I.M. Pei as its focal point. "By shifting the central exhibition footprint, the artist will have a fresh canvas to work with, while bringing attention to an iconic public space in the city," he explains in a news release.

Some events will still take place in the Dallas Arts District, says Monica Salazar, director of programming, via email.

Aurora's theme will be "Future Worlds," playing on ideas of technological innovation. Curators hope the art gets attendees talking about what the future will look like.

The festival will feature local and non-local artists. The three guest curators are:

• Dooeun Choi, who works as art director of the Da Vinci Creative 2017 and as the adjunct curator of a digital art museum called Art Center Nabi, both in Seoul, South Korea
  
• Justine Ludwig, director of exhibitions and senior curator at the Dallas Contemporary
• Nadim Samman, the co-curator and founder of the Antarctic Biennale — a socio-cultural project in icy Antarctica — and co-director of a nonprofit in Berlin called Import Projects

Aurora takes place every two years and was expected to return in 2017. In 2015, it drew its largest crowd yet — more than 50,000 people — to the Dallas Arts District. In "off" years, Aurora hosts a preview event called Prelude. The last Prelude took place in 2016 and featured artists from Paris, Mumbai, Montreal, London, Seoul and North Texas, according to Dallas Morning News reporter Michael Granberry.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings calls Aurora "a cornerstone event for the arts in North Texas." It has succeeded in years past in making art accessible to tens of thousands of people, and for free.

We'll share details, such as the exact date of Aurora 2018, when they become available.