A Mysterious Statue Recently Placed Near The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Suggests Bryan Was More Than Human, Calls Dallas “A Shared Delusion.”

After first spotting the piece on his way into work last Friday, Dallas attorney John Bradley shared photos of the statue and its typo-ridden plaque to Twitter this morning when he was surprised to see it still standing after the weekend. He had initially assumed the piece was installed as some sort of marketing play for an event taking place at the convention center, which has been hosting a printing gathering from Wednesday to Friday last week; the fact that it’s still in place now has him convinced it’s “an unsanctioned street art installation.”

It’s certainly something.



According to its plaque, the piece is called “Solomon: Self-Portrait of John Neely Bryan (hypothetical), 1877” and it is made of “steel and beaks” — an assertion Bradley denies, saying it “appears to not be carved but maybe a model with a real jacket painted to look like a statue.” Also dubious are the plaque’s claims that the piece is a gift to the City of Dallas from the late philanthropist Margaret McDermott, for whom one of Dallas’ Santiago Calatrava-designed bridges was named.

Still, most surprising are the details implied in the (anonymous) artist statement portion of the inscription: “Confined in his last days to an insane asylum in Austin, no one knows what fnal (sic) confusions the founding father of Dallas confronted before his death Did the lined between selfhood and otherhood blur completely? Did fesh (sic) confate the cephalopod? Is the city he began a city in fact or a shared delusion?”

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https://www.centraltrack.com/was-city-of-dallas-founder-john-neely-bryan-a-cephalopod/