Art or Advertising? Behind the Tricky "You/We Belong Here" Signage Outside the Barclays Center
The "anthem" of the Tsais' social justice work, or the "linguistic pleasantries of marketing"? The "Liberty Portraits" now claimed by Social Justice Fund. "Brooklyn Art Encounters," too?
This is part of a series on the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund, established in 2020 by the billionaire couple who own most of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, which includes the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and the Barclays Center operating company.1
When I walk visitors around the Barclays Center, I ask what they make of the complementary “You belong here” and “We belong here” neon signs, installed at the top of the transit entrance on the arena’s Ticketmaster Plaza.
I don’t say I consider it as much advertising as art, cloaked in the fuzzy notion of “social justice.” Or that using art is a strategic move, almost akin to arena developer Bruce Ratner making Jay-Z a Nets/arena frontman, helping the Tsais gain business and civic clout.
Or that last year’s Liberty Portraits installation on the plaza, honoring the 2024 WNBA champions, has been retroactively framed as social justice.
Often, the visitors are confounded. Their answers include:
a photo op for people tagging the Barclays Center
a sign of a gateway
a rebuke to project critics (since “we” means the arena or the teams)
a message of inclusivity, perhaps for immigrants or gays & lesbians
a symbol of tackiness
Very few conclude it’s art, much less art with a message from the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests that converged on the pandemic-shuttered arena, creating what I called Brooklyn’s Accidental New Town Square.
The most common early response to the “You Belong Here” signage, as I wrote in 2021, was suspicion—even from arena workers—that it aimed to nudge ticket buyers. (“You belong inside here.”)
“We Belong Here” gets extra oomph when paired with advertising for the Liberty or the Nets, which has appeared above the stairs leading to the transit entrance, which the arena operator controls.
Also consider the image from a Brooklyn Nets superfan (and NetsDaily editor), affirming “We belong here” after 19 years as a season ticket holder.
An ambiguous explanation
The signage, unveiled in October 2021, was an early initiative of the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund (SJF). A small plaque at the transit center entrance, crediting Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan for “Belong/Brooklyn, 2021,” states:
Brooklyn is the vibrant center of New York City, a refuge for explorers and immigrants the world over. Belong/Brooklyn (2021) is an affirmation for this complex and ever-changing community. These three simple words—YOU, WE, and BELONG—invite every viewer who enters the site to celebrate the present moment, and to consider fundamental questions about who belongs where, and why.
Is that deep thinking, double-talk, or both?
Hmm—to “celebrate the present moment, and to consider fundamental questions about who belongs where, and why.” OK, why is the signage there? Who’s responsible—some random art angel?
Pending questions
The plaque doesn’t credit the Tsais or the Social Justice Fund.
Nor does it explain that the fund was established by the couple behind the Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment holding company, part of a promised ten-year, $50 million social justice commitment in response to the police murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests.
How much did the signage cost? How much does that count toward the SJF’s claimed—but impossible-to-verify—$5 million a year in philanthropic investment? We don’t know.
Charity, or strategy?
How does this “address systemic imbalances and root causes that produce racial gaps in education, health and wealth,” a central SJF commitment?
Heck, is it even charitable spending? The Liberty CEO described it as “Clara Wu Tsai's sign, vision, and mystique,” helping inspire business success.
Indeed, how can “You belong here” not sound like an invitation to paying customers?
The image above, the 10th anniversary photo mosaic created by the arena company, centers the Barclays Center and foregrounds the signage.
So it’s tough to disentangle a claimed philanthropic initiative from a promotional effort. After all, from inside the arena, “We belong here” looms, as in the photo below.
No wonder the Barclays Center has proudly said it “integrates contemporary art into the arena experience.”
Commemorating a protest?
Social Justice Fund Executive Director Gregg Bishop, interviewed July 16, 2024, offered the standard explanation: the initiative was “part of recognizing that the plaza was a central sort of organic town square during the racial justice protests of 2020.”
He was interviewed by The Local W, a women’s sports site, in advance of a public ceremony hosted by the Liberty and the SJF to honor the fund’s grantees.
(My future coverage will address the SJF’s array of initiatives, which include support for nonprofits, a small business loan program, and investments in BIPOC-led start-ups.)
The SJF website says it commissioned Strachan’s work “in part to reflect Barclays Center’s role as a hub for community activism and the continued fight for racial equity, and to honor the risks taken by Brooklynites—and all New Yorkers—who demand better for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.”
(Emphases added throughout)
Does “in part” acknowledge that the signage does double duty? After all, the official photo above left strategically pairs “You belong here” with “Barclays Center.”
Your space, or ours?
The neon sculpture, Bishop said, was “a constant reminder to the community that this is your space.”
OK, but how does that square with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment’s ability to block off a seemingly public plaza for its own use?
The plaza is constrained by the arena’s operational needs. When organizers in May 2021 planned a protest on the anniversary of Floyd’s killing, they were shunted across the street, as a Nets playoff game took precedence.
The space is regularly limited before events—often hours beforehand—because it’s not truly public but an “interim use” granted by New York State, which leases the arena site to Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.
A tower, dubbed “Miss Brooklyn” by architect Frank Gehry, was once planned to loom over the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, with an Urban Room atrium that would’ve served the arena, the office tower, and the transit hub below.
Now, the plaza serves the arena, while providing a canvas for advertising and promotion. Some crowds even overflow the plaza onto the surrounding sidewalks.
Going permanent
The unbuilt tower’s bulk likely will be shifted across Flatbush Avenue to a parcel known as Site 5, enabling a much larger development than previously approved.
Making the plaza permanent would be hugely valuable for the arena operator, avoiding the intrusive construction and operation of “Miss Brooklyn.”
An affirmation for the community?
As to an “affirmation for this complex and ever-changing community,” what role has the arena—and the larger Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project—played in creating community, or dividing it? In displacing people or inviting them?
Those questions linger.
Consider the Brooklyn Crossing tower (B4, 18 Sixth Ave.), said to be “Now Leasing” in the 2022 image below, with all the “affordable” units aimed at middle-income households, most earning six figures, and the market-rate units even pricier.
Yes, the overall Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project, with the arena and 15/16 towers, no longer has one owner. Still, it was sold to the public, including with public subsidies, as a package deal to deliver public goods like affordable housing.
Today, the arena and teams are big financial successes for the Tsais, while the $5 million a year designated for social justice, as I’ve written, is dwarfed by the arena’s annual property tax exemption, most recently $122.7 million.
(Also, we don’t know exactly how they’ve spent the money, though I’ll have some more details in future coverage.)
Airing the contradictions
Potential contradictions rarely get aired. One anomalous moment of tension emerged at a Yale University panel discussion, including Strachan and Wu Tsai, described in the Feb. 22, 2023 Yale Daily News:
Through its words, Strachan’s installation attempted to directly address this concept, telling passersby that they belong. However, as a member of the audience — who claimed to be “very confused” about the piece — pointed out, the construction of the Barclays Center displaced many Brooklyn inhabitants, creating a dichotomy between the work’s message and the place it is situated in.
Wu Tsai acknowledged this displacement and noted that the work was made to pay homage to organic protests.
“I think it’s a perfectly fine position to have to not get it. I think it’s a part of public discourse,” Stratchan added.
Has Wu Tsai at any other point acknowledged any untoward effects from the arena? Or that the protests, however organic, were imposed on the arena, not invited by it?
Another way to think about it
The art helps distract from criticism, for example, of the arena’s rising ticket prices or of the extensive public support—tax-exempt financing, zoning overrides, and the ability to sell naming rights—that far exceeds the announced charitable spending.
However, in mounting a social justice art project that also masquerades as arena advertising and reputation enhancement—or is it the other way around?—the billionaire Tsais inoculate themselves against potential criticism.2
Consider how Wu Tsai’s portrait on the Social Justice Fund website, in the screenshot below, depicts her in front of “We belong here,” while the ad in the background hails the Brooklyn Nets.
“Belong Brooklyn” programs
Online, the signage highlights the Social Justice Fund’s “Belong Brooklyn” initiative, described as “A series of programs aimed at uniting communities across Brooklyn and beyond.”
That’s a catchall term for the signage itself, public concerts, and $100,000 in annual Tsai/Social Justice Fund support for nonprofits in, so far, Workforce Readiness, Violence Interruption, and Black Maternal Health.
Are those things welcomed? Yes. Do they “unite communities”? Only in part. Are they dwarfed by the owners’ financial benefits? Surely.
Benign civic-mindedness
A friendly YES Network interview with Wu Tsai in November 2021 suggested benign civic-mindedness.
“Opening week, you debuted a new and beautiful piece of public art outside Barclays Center,” asked Michael Grady. “How did that idea and your vision for it come about?”
“The point of it is really to commemorate the protests and the protesters who organically came to the plaza in the wake of George Floyd’s death,” Wu Tsai said.
If so, why choose a deliberately ambiguous work by Strachan that had already been produced, in different forms, around the country, in far less commercial circumstances?
(Wu Tsai has called Strachan “deeply original.” A MacArthur Fellow, he’s won a so-called “genius” grant. Still, this oft-duplicated concept—Strachan produces similar signage in “editions” of up to nine copies—complicates her claim.)
“And we also thought that it could be really healing for some of the protesters who were there,” Wu Tsai said. However, they invited no protest leaders—who claimed they’d “totally appropriated” the arena’s plaza—to the “block party” unveiling ceremony.
The Social Justice Fund video below invokes the #youbelonghere hashtag while ultimately saluting the arena.
A civic institution?
“I view Barclays Center as a civic institution--a cultural institution and a civic institution,” Wu Tsai added in the interview. “I think that sports and culture together really foster civic connection.”
Some with long memories recall arena builder Bruce Ratner calling himself a “civic developer” and talking about “civic” projects.
Yes, the Social Justice Fund sponsors cultural programs. Then again, concerts on the plaza, coupled with tables for both vendors and nonprofit organizations, might be characterized as arena “community relations.”
Belonging as the SJF “anthem”?
“We really want to inspire people who just come into contact with it to have their own dialogue with… what it means to belong,” Wu Tsai said. “Belonging is sort of the anthem of all our social justice work. It’s a way to really point out that equity is such an important part of people feeling as if they belong.”
If “belonging” is the anthem, why have the Tsais steadily raised arena ticket prices? Why can’t Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment disclose how much financial aid it offers for the pricey youth basketball clinics held across the street? Why are the SJF’s financials opaque?
If equity is important, why does the Social Justice Fund ignore the unmet promises of Atlantic Yards affordable housing? (Well, the cost would be enormous.)
Some aren’t swayed
Jake Romm, writing Nov. 30, 2023, in the New York Review of Architecture, described the vista harshly:
There is a sign next to the Barclays Center that sends pinpricks of revulsion down my spine every time I see it. You know the one: “We Belong Here,” in pink, neon cursive script. Opened in 2012, Barclays famously displaced hundreds of neighborhood residents, drove out small business owners by raising property prices, and created a permanent traffic jam on Atlantic Avenue. The arena’s arty welcome mat is, of course, a paean to the “authentic city” marketing tactic that effaces and tokenizes those who really did once belong. But read another way, the motto effects a defensive posture in the face of suspicion and recites the consumer’s prerogative: “We have our tickets, we bought our treats, we have a right to be here.”
As I wrote, the criticism might merit footnotes, but yes, it’s hardly the authentic city.
Is that motto a “defensive posture in the face of suspicion”? Not to Wu Tsai. But Romm, like many, hasn’t absorbed the official narrative, and concludes that the signage speaks most to arena ticketholders.
The back story
In 2021, CityLab was offered an exclusive preview of the installation, unwisely suggesting that the new signage might seem “a pointed rebuke” to those who protested the arena, as if it could trump the project’s troubled history.
My subsequent article in The Indypendent, Art or Advertising: The Contradictions of You/We Belong Here Neon Signage at Barclays Center, came with the subheading, “Is it celebrating social justice protest? Or co-opting it?”
Today, as a new Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park plan percolates, a pending question is whether the arena company would have to pay for gaining that permanent plaza.
If the Tsais avoid payment or negotiate a nominal sum, that art installation might be seen as a prudent investment.
At the ceremony
“We’re here to celebrate the history and the culture of Brooklyn,” Wu Tsai said at the Oct. 23, 2021, opening ceremony. “We’re also here to commemorate the activism and the bravery of all the people that were here.”
The “block party” offered early hints that the Social Justice Fund might serve as a complement to the Tsais’ business enterprises.
Wu Tsai welcomed guests “on behalf of Joe and myself and Barclays Center, the Brooklyn Nets and the [WNBA’s] New York Liberty.”
The backdrop advertised not just the Social Justice Fund but also the Nets and the Liberty. The swag: A Nets-themed bag and face mask. The Nets’ four dance and entertainment crews performed.
Among the elected officials speaking were Lieutenant Gov. Brian Benjamin and Rep. Yvette Clarke. Crystal Hudson, the Democratic nominee (and thus shoo-in) for the 35th District Council seat, also attended.
Social justice meets sports entertainment
So it’s tough to disentangle the Social Justice Fund sponsorship from the Tsais’ profit-seeking sports entertainment corporations.
While the promotional rendering supplied to CityLab misleadingly omitted background branding, the neon signage fits with Barclays Center advertising, including the wraparound screen inside the signature oculus and the lucrative LED “wall” over the entrance doors, added under the Tsais’ ownership.
Art, said Wu Tsai, “really speaks to our shared identity and our shared pride and really to our belonging.” It also burnishes the Tsais’ reputation as philanthropists, obscuring Joe Tsai’s support for authoritarian China, where he leads the e-commerce and tech company Alibaba.
So the Social Justice Fund focuses on Wu Tsai, even claiming, misleadingly, that it’s her personal initiative.
Tsai didn’t speak at the unveiling. If he had, he might have faced charges of hypocrisy: Does the “You belong” consensus apply to those backing Hong Kong autonomy, or Uighur dignity?
In 2019, 300 protesters wearing “Stand With Hong Kong” and “Free Tibet” t-shirts attended a Nets game, without incident, responding to Tsai’s notorious “open letter” claiming China stood united in response to an NBA General Manager re-tweeting “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong." The Barclays Center didn’t eject them. Then again, such protests have never been invoked as “belonging.”
The artist and his interpretations
At the unveiling, artist Strachan said, “Hopefully this space continues to be a place of conversation, a space of contemplation … And hopefully, in the long run, we live in a world where we all feel like we belong.”
Yet this space also serves commerce, and Strachan surely recognizes potential contradictions. The New York Times on Sept. 16, 2020, reported on a “Belong” installation at Compound, a Long Beach, CA, exhibition space:
The seemingly anodyne expressions are meant to provoke a certain amount of skepticism in the viewer. If neon is the language of advertising and storefront seduction, what are these works selling? Lately, amid the protests, Strachan imagines the sentiments might strike some perpetually disenfranchised people as ludicrous. “It’s a seemingly friendly gesture kind of couched in an array of really tough questions,” [Strachan] said of the piece… “Like, who’s the you? How are we defining ‘here’? And who gets to belong?”
In Brooklyn, the official narrative is less nuanced. The work, the Social Justice Fund asserts, “will serve as an affirmation of belonging as well as a call to unity in the heart of Brooklyn.”
Site specific “marketing”?
The Social Justice Fund calls the installation “site-specific.” While it pairs two complementary signs, it’s not entirely original. Consider related work at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, in the video below.
As artist and curator Erhan Us put it:
Strachan’s text-based sculptural installation combines the visual aesthetics of storefront signage with the linguistic pleasantries of marketing and advertising, in this case initiating important questions for any audience: Who are “we”? How does one “belong”? And what defines “here”?
The “linguistic pleasantries of marketing and advertising,” indeed.
The supportive case: a “perfect response”
Am I too skeptical? After all, others have embraced it. Consider this Nov. 8, 2021, Social Justice Fund interview with Strachan and Wu Tsai by curator Adrienne Edwards.3
Edwards first saw the signage late at night from a taxicab, she recalled, “coming back from I think maybe my first gala after the pandemic, and I was shocked. I just stopped because I could not believe that this was here in this place.”
Edwards recalled deciding to protest in 2020, despite fears about the pandemic. “When I saw that sign there, it took me back in a way that was deeply moving,” she said, “and felt like the perfect response to something that had not been put in that language.”
We can’t doubt her personal perception. Still, it’s questionable how universal such observations might be.
Transforming the plaza?
The SJF has claimed that the installation “transforms the Barclays Center Plaza,”4 and Christian Viveros-Fauné, writing April 26, 2022, in the shell-of-itself Village Voice, duly hyperbolized that the plaza’s “transformation… appears complete.”
Though the writer called the sculpture “the opposite of top-down development, which has troubled Barclays Center,” it was installed, as I wrote, with zero consultation. (It’s been extended through 2027, and I wouldn’t bet against further extensions.)
Columnist Enuma Okoro, in an Aug. 5, 2022, essay in London’s Financial Times, suggested that the work “made me think about the notion of belonging and “dis-belonging.”
Strachan’s work, she wrote, reminded her “of the value and necessity of raising questions publicly, in a way that invites people to understand that we are each individually implicated.”
That’s weak tea. How does individual responsibility compare to that of government and corporate actors?
Had Okoro grappled with such questions, as I wrote, could she have posed so enthusiastically with Clara Wu Tsai at an Onassis Medal event, where the couple was (controversially) awarded the Municipal Art Society’s highest honor?
At the time, I asked if Empire State Development, the state authority that oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards, would enforce $2,000/month fines for the 876 affordable housing units that were not delivered by 2025.
Now, we know: it won’t; instead, ESD has accepted fractional payments. That reflects belonging, too.
“Art at Barclays”
The overlap between philanthropy and commerce is clear on the Art at Barclays Center page (as of March), which saluted Wu Tsai for integrating “contemporary art into the arena experience,” first citing Strachan’s “iconic We Belong Here/You Belong Here beacon.”
This suggests that the Social Justice Fund might be considered an arm of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.
The Liberty Portraits, too
Another ambiguous blend of art and advertising emerged last summer: The Liberty Portraits: A Monument to the 2024 Champions, a public installation of player portraits, by LaToya Ruby Frazier, accompanied by detailed, humanizing text.
Art, Promotion, or Both? The “Liberty Portraits” Are a BSE Global Power Move, I wrote last July 6. (I used the holding company’s name before it reverted to Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.) “Stirring and bewildering, the Ticketmaster Plaza exhibit claims to be public-spirited but most serves the brand.”
After all, the installation from the MacArthur Prize-winning Frazier was mounted during the WNBA season, hyping a repeat championship and encouraging ticket sales.
The initial press release attributed the exhibition only to the arena company and Wu Tsai.
Social Justice, at Suite Level
Now we know more. While the Art at Barclays Center page does attribute The Liberty Portraits to Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, it credits the commission to the Social Justice Fund.
The installation has since been moved to the Barclays Center Suite Level, with the purported social justice message ever more distant.
The Liberty Portraits goes unmentioned on the Social Justice Fund’s website or the 5-Year Impact Report.5 However, the Tsais surely can claim this promotional project as part of the purported spending on social justice.
The SJF got credit at an event last Sept. 25, “Celebrating LaToya Ruby Frazier at Barclays Center, hosted by Clara Wu Tsai and Sophia Cohen.”
The fête started on the plaza, then moved to the arena’s ritzy Crown Club. Among the guests was Council Member Tiffany Caban of Queens, a Liberty superfan (and Brad Lander attendance buddy) whose allegiance apparently trumps her Democratic Socialist identity.6
A photo reveals the celebration was sponsored by the Social Justice Fund, CULTURED magazine (where Cohen is Arts Editor-at-Large), and the tequila brand Casa Dragones.7
In this photo, the SJF’s Bishop helps artist Frazier with the public address system. “It’s similar to working for a foundation, your standard foundation,” observed Bishop in a podcast interview last August. “They do similar work, but instead I work specifically for a family member.”
So if Wu Tsai wears many hats, including SJF (co)-founder8, Liberty Governor, and Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Vice-Chair, so too does the SJF’s Bishop, who, in that case, was helping that family member serve philanthropy, art, and commerce.9
For that event, as the photos show, the plaza was cordoned off. “Belonging” was only for the invitees.
“Brooklyn Art Encounters” and social justice
The Barclays Center will soon get more art inside and out, announced as “Brooklyn Art Encounters,” but this seeming gesture to the borough likely will serve the arena and the brand above all.10
In Spring 2027, according to the press release, Brooklyn native Kambui Olujimi “will present We Always Have Room for One More, a group of seven bronze historical and fictional characters playing the local street game Skelly on the Ticketmaster Plaza.”
It and another of the new initiatives will be supported by the Social Justice Fund.
So Olujimi, known for honoring his Bedford-Stuyvesant roots in art, will commemorate a street game (requiring bottle caps and chalk) from bygone days at a large venue that, to many, helped fuel the displacement of the aging working-class population that used to play skelly.
You can’t blame the artist for wanting to be paid and for his art to be seen, of course, and a prominent public space—well, privately controlled and mostly public—is better than a private one.
Still, the intersection of elegy and “authenticity” can be tricky: does this, to echo Romm’s phrasing, honor “those who really did once belong,” or tokenize them?
“I love that, because it’s about the culture and history of Brooklyn,” Wu Tsai told The Art Newspaper about Olujimi’s work. “It brings together so many of the worlds that we care about.”
The press release said the work “will draw on Olujimi’s memories of growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the plaza’s long history as a neighborhood gathering place.”
Neighborhood gathering place? The plaza’s a crossroads for many, a regular gathering place for arena crowds, an occasional location for SJF- and arena-sponsored “block parties,” and a sporadic space for protests. In 2020, the chalk on the plaza was not for skelly.
Some portion of the $5 million a year pledged by the Tsais for social justice initiatives will fund this art project. Like the neon signage, it comes with ambiguities: is it art, brand management, or both?
The hyperlink includes all articles tagged with the Social Justice Fund, including an initial one Feb. 4, 2026, headlined Has the Tsais’ Social Justice Fund Really Invested $25M “In Brooklyn” Since 2020? The series only includes those with the logo “Eye on Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation Social Justice Fund.”
My phrasing borrows from a 2022 New Yorker report by Alice Gregory, Can an Artists’ Collective in Africa Repair a Colonial Legacy?, regarding an art project that appears to masquerade as development work—or vice versa—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
But in mounting an art project that appears to masquerade as development work—or is it development work that masquerades as art?—[Renzo] Martens both compels criticism and inoculates himself against it.
In 2024, Wu Tsai would help sponsor the Edwards-curated Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum.
When the SJF and the arena operator highlight the plaza’s civic nature, they often avoid mentioning sponsors such as SeatGeek and its successor, Ticketmaster. Barclays Center announcements, though, typically cite the sponsor.
It was installed just before the fifth anniversary.
Another guest was Tamara McCaw, Interim President and now President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, surely invited because of her arts credentials, not her role as a Director of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation, which might advise state officials on arena obligations. McCaw worked at BAM earlier in her career, then served as The Shed’s Chief Civic Program Officer.
“Wu Tsai and BSE Global will introduce new art and artists to the interior of Barclays Center,” the Liberty Portraits press release said, and “Andria Hickey, the former chief curator at The Shed, is serving as curatorial advisor and overseeing the venue’s art program.”
Cohen, daughter of New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, last July published a softball interview with Wu Tsai in CULTURED about both Belong/Brooklyn and The Liberty Portraits.
Wu Tsai is not the sole founder, given that the SJF was established by the couple, though that’s now her claimed role.
In 2024, at its Annual Meeting and Winter Gala, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce honored “our WNBA Champions the New York Liberty and BSE Global, their parent corporation,” wrote Brooklyn Chamber CEO Randy Peers on LinkedIn. “Thank you to Liberty CEO Keia Clarke and Gregg Bishop from the Social Justice Fund for joining us.” So Bishop was seen as a corporate representative.
The Liberty Portraits has been retconned as part of Brooklyn Art Encounters, though, obviously, that moniker didn’t exist at the time of the installation.
One piece, inside the new Flatbush Premium entrance, will be Rashid Johnson’s mixed-media work “Anxious Audience,” owned by Wu Tsai and recently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In December, the Guggenheim’s 2025 benefit honored the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), and artist Johnson “for their deep commitment to youth programs,” while raising $2.4 million for the museum. The co-chairs included the NBA, the NBPA, and the Tsais. Their contribution, at least so far, has not been attributed to the Social Justice Fund.
It's silly corporate messaging. The fact that the so-called "social justice movement" of 2010s vintage is so easily co-opted is testament to its vapidity. It doesn't take much to be an effective wokewasher.
Very well done!
Since it’s installation When I see the neon slogan there’s always in the distance another signage “The Barclays Center” signage. It’s yet another company, a bank, trying to be cleansed of its part in the slave trade. Does the slogan handle the heavy lifting or is it, as you’ve brilliantly laid out, or just glossed over the high price Brooklyn community has paid and continues to pay a private company’s increasing profits.