The Basquiat Project: Looking Back, Moving Forward

Barclays Center will host an art show featuring approximately 100 pieces created by New York City middle and high school students, inspired by Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. All of the artwork to be displayed was created by participants in an educational arts program the Brooklyn Nets developed in partnership with the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) and the Fund for Public Schools, about the work of Basquiat.

Barclays Center will host an art show featuring approximately 100 pieces created by New York City middle and high school students, inspired by Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. All of the artwork to be displayed was created by participants in an educational arts program the Brooklyn Nets developed in partnership with the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) and the Fund for Public Schools, about the work of Basquiat. The Basquiat art program was funded by the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation. In 2020, the Tsais established a Social Justice Fund to work toward economic mobility and racial justice for Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Brooklyn.

The free-admission gallery will be set up in the arena’s main atrium and will be open to the public from 2-6 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 8 and Tuesday Aug. 9. Barclays Center will host a private opening for the students on Sunday, Aug. 7.

MORE ABOUT THE BASQUIAT PROJECT

The Basquiat Project was created during the 2020-21 school year when the Brooklyn Nets, NYC Dept. Of Education, and the Fund for Public Schools partnered to develop an educational Jean-Michel Basquiat arts program for students, funded by the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund. Due to the course’s extraordinary reception, the program’s curriculum was expanded to all NYC public schools for the 2021-22 school year.

As part of the program, the NYC DOE’s Office of Arts and Special Projects (OASP) led a team of Brooklyn visual arts teachers in the creation and dissemination of an art unit that has been taught to thousands of students across more than 75 schools. During the two-month course, students study various Jean-Michel Basquiat works, learning how art can both serve as a vehicle for communication and to facilitate societal change. Basquiat is widely recognized for popularizing black heritage in art and used his artwork as a creative outlet to explore himself and provide social commentary on the world around him – mostly on societal inequalities.