The Armory Show to present sculpture programming at the 2024 U.S. Open.
Exterior view of USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Photo by Andrew Ong and USTA. Courtesy of The Armory Show.
The Armory Show will partner with the U.S. Open Tennis Championships for the third year in a row. This collaboration, intended to spotlight artists from underrepresented backgrounds, will showcase sculptures at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center from August 19th through the competition’s finals on September 8th. The programming is part of the fair’s broader 30th anniversary programming. The Armory Show 2024 is scheduled for September 6th to 8th at the Javits Center in New York.
Four artists will be featured in this year’s Armory Show and U.S. Open collaboration. Claudia Peña Salinas will present her sculpture Tetl Mirror I (2024), exploring Aztec and Mayan mythology. New York–based artist Eva Robarts’s contribution, Fantasy of Happiness (2022), is made from reclaimed tennis balls and chain-link fence. Also featured are Taiwanese Canadian sculptor An Te Liu’s bronze abstract sculpture Venus Redux (2018) and Tomokazu Matsuyama’s stainless steel sculpture Runner (2021).
Previous collaborations at the U.S. Open have featured a diverse range of artists. In 2023, the exhibition included Zizipho Poswa’s massive bronze sculpture of bananas, a sculpture of a rocket by David Roy, and Allen-Golder Carpenter’s totemic concrete stack. The 2022 edition featured work by three artists: Gerald Chukwuma, Jose Davila, and Luzene Hill.
Exterior view of the Javits Center in New York. Courtesy of the Javits Center and The Armory Show.
This year also marks the fourth iteration of the Armory Off-Site initiative. In addition to the U.S. Open sculptures, the program will feature performances around New York by artists including María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Oliver Herring, as well as large-scale installations. Project for Empty Space’s mobile exhibition “Body Freedom for Every(body)” will spotlight art and activism around bodily autonomy. Additionally, a new work by David Salle will be presented in Times Square.
The Armory Show will also commemorate its 30th anniversary by recreating a room in the Gramercy Park Hotel, where the fair’s first edition was held in 1994. This space will feature various memorabilia, archival images, and videos calling back to the fair’s debut.
The Armory Show will officially open with its VIP preview day on September 5th.
