Paul Pfeiffer, the conceptual artist known for his uncanny interventions in mass-media imagery of superstar athletes and entertainers, will be the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn. The facility will also soon host newly installed and specially commissioned works by Sarah Sze, Rashid Johnson, Mark Bradford and Kambui Olujimi, as well as launch a project to bring moving-image works to the wraparound digital screen above its main plaza.
The arena’s parent company, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, revealed on Thursday that as part of his residency Pfeiffer will be fully embedded in the complex’s systems, both in its public spaces—with basketball games of the New York Liberty and Brooklyn Nets, as well as a full calendar of major concerts and other spectacles—and behind the scenes. As part of his residency, Pfeiffer will collaborate with the artist Shaun Leonardo and the non-profit Social Justice Fund on a year-long project titled Exodus to lead media workshops with youth and adults who have been affected by the criminal-justice system.
“Paul, as people probably know from his art, is a big basketball fan, so he seemed like the perfect partner for us in so many ways,” Clara Wu Tsai, the co-owner of the Liberty and Nets franchises and the vice chair of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, tells The Art Newspaper. “The idea is to offer exposure to what goes on in an arena, particularly on the media side, and that is something Paul is so keen to do. It is also an area that our Social Justice Fund identified as where there could be potential opportunities, including employment opportunities, especially for system-impacted young people.”
An image from Pfeiffer’s basketball-themed photographic series, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2004-18) © Paul Pfeiffer; Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Carlier | Gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Pfeiffer’s residency will begin next month, as will a new initiative called “Art on the Hour” that will feature 60-second moving-image works at the top of every hour on the large circular digital screen dubbed the “oculus” over the plaza at the arena’s main entrance. That project, which will run until spring 2027, will feature a different artist each month with a full lineup of participants to be revealed at a later date.
“We like putting art in the public domain, so that means commissions on the plaza itself, but it also extends to the oculus, which is right there in full view,” Wu Tsai says. “People drive by it, people walk through the plaza and see it, and this is part of our desire to bring art out of museums and into the public. Someone encountering a work that changes the way they see what’s possible or just takes them out of the moment and into something else—that is really the goal.”
In addition to the initiatives launching this spring, the arena will feature several new artistic attractions in the autumn when the Nets season begins—and the Liberty may be deep in a WNBA playoffs campaign. A large-scale suspended commission by Sarah Sze, Wave (2026), will be installed in the arena’s main entrance atrium. Typical of the artist’s work straddling sculpture, video and installation, it will consist of more than 250 screens capturing animated projections and images. Wu Tsai says: “This will be in the atrium, which is really our front door, it sort of sets the mood.”
A new entrance on the Flatbush Avenue side of the arena, also debuting in the autumn, will include a new work by Mark Bradford, Tina (2026), made from layers of singed paper and silver foil. The entry will also host Untitled Anxious Audience (2019), a large-scale work by Rashid Johnson that was featured in his recent retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan (2025-26).
In May 2027, the Brooklyn-born artist Kambui Olujimi—who will be featured in the central exhibition of this year’s Venice Biennale—will unveil a new large-scale sculptural commission on the plaza at the main entrance to the arena. To be titled We Always Have Room for One More, it will feature a group of larger-than-life bronze figures playing the Brooklyn street game Skelly. “I love that, because it’s about the culture and history of Brooklyn,” Wu Tsai says. “It brings together so many of the worlds that we care about.”
The upcoming artistic interventions on the Barclays Center campus will join existing pieces and projects by LaToya Ruby Frazier, Tavares Strachan, José Parlá, Mickalene Thomas, Adam Pendleton and Ursula von Rydingsvard. The arena’s recent commissions and projects, starting with Frazier’s installation of portraits of the Liberty players and their communities, have been organised by Brooklyn Art Encounters, a programme whose advisers include Studio Museum in Harlem director and chief curator Thelma Golden, Los Angeles County Museum of Art chief executive and director Michael Govan, and Metropolitan Museum of Art curator of Modern and contemporary art Akili Tommasino, among others. Andria Hickey, the former chief curator at The Shed, oversees the programme and serves as curatorial adviser.
