The Barclays Center arena in downtown Brooklyn is expanding its arts programming in the service of “Brooklyn Art Encounters,” a new multi-year initiative to continue public art presentations on the building’s high-profile plaza but also move into other realms including an artist-in-residence program to be inaugurated by Paul Pfeiffer.
Pfeiffer, whose work has engaged the spectacle around sports, will lead what a press release describes as “a year-long media workshop engaging justice-impacted youth and adults from surrounding communities” in collaboration with artist Shaun Leonardo. With support from the Social Justice Fund, the two artists will provide training in video production, storytelling, and media practices, as well as behind-the-scenes access to Barclays Center operations during live events, including broadcasting, security, and concessions.
That begins in May, when a new “Art on the Hour” series of digital artworks will also start broadcasting 60-second artworks on the arena’s looming “Oculus” LED screen. In the fall, Sarah Sze will premiere Wave, a new commissioned work “suspending over 250 animated projected images in a wave like sculpture” in the Barclays Center’s entry atrium. Around the same time, big paintings by Rashid Johnson and Mark Bradford will go on view in the arena’s “Flatbush Premium” entrance. And Kambui Olujimi will present We Always Have Room for One More, a series of “seven bronze historical and fictional characters playing the local street game Skelly” on the arena’s plaza flanked by Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.
The future “Brooklyn Art Encounters” programming follows a presentation last summer for which LaToya Frazier presented large-scale photo portraits of players from the New York Liberty—the celebrated women’s basketball team that shares the Barclays Center with the lowly Brooklyn Nets. Other artists whose work has shown around the Barclays Center include Ursula von Rydingsvard, Adam Pendleton, Mickalene Thomas, Tavares Stachan, and José Parlá.
“Brooklyn Art Encounters” will be overseen in a curatorial adviser role by Andria Hickey, formerly the chief curator of the Shed as well as a curator for Pace Gallery, MOCA Cleveland, and New York’s Public Art Fund. The program’s team of advisors includes Thelma Golden, Michael Govan, Clara Kim, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anne Pasternak, and Akili Tommasino.
