The partnership is in its third consecutive year and represents part of the fourth iteration of The Armory Show’s public artworks project, Armory Off-Site.

“We’re thrilled to again partner with the US Open to showcase artworks by artists of underrepresented backgrounds. Both The Armory Show and the US Open are defining parts of New York’s fall calendar, and this partnership comes during an exciting cultural moment for New York City,” Kyla McMillan, director of The Armory Show told ARTnews via email. “Through our partnership, we hope to reach new and familiar audiences by providing an opportunity to discover artists and artworks, perhaps even forming a lasting connection with the fair.”

The projects on view during the US Open include the installation Tetl Mirror I (2024) by Claudia Peña Salinas, presented by Embajada, which explores Aztec and Mayan mythology; Eva Robarts’ sculpture, Fantasy of Happiness (2022), which uses discarded tennis balls caught within the chain-link of a reclaimed gate and is presented by the gallery Ruttkowski;68; Taiwanese-Canadian sculptor An Te Liu’s bronze-casted Venus Redux (2018), presented by Blouin Division; and Tomokazu Matsuyama’s Runner (2021), presented by Kavi Gupta.

The works will be on view throughout the tournament, from August 19 to September 8. As part of US Open Fan Week, access to Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is free from August 19 through August 25.

The Armory Off Site program includes performances across New York City. The artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s recent work Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity (2024) is comprised of visits to seven historically significant New York City communities, from Harlem Art Park to Madison Square Park, with poetry readings at each site and a workshops and performances at the end of the route. 

Oliver Herring will present 20-minute performance that serves as an homage to “queer icons whose creative forces and visionary careers were tragically and prematurely interrupted” on the Bowery, and a new work by David Salle with grace Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment program.

This year The Armory Show will celebrate its 30th anniversary. More than 235 galleries are expected to participate in the fair, scheduled to run from September 6–8, with a VIP preview day on September 5, at the Javits Center in Manhattan.

But this edition of the US Open will have something else noticeably different all around: art. The United States Tennis Association, which organizes the tournament, has partnered with the Armory Show, one of New York’s leading art fairs which has its VIP preview Thursday, to present a series of major sculptures by a roster of diverse artists for an off-site exhibit.

Running until September 11, the last day of the US Open, the exhibit is a way for the fair to reach locals and visitors to New York outside of the confines of the fair’s new home in the Javits Center. “We look forward to building upon this partnership for many years to come—providing a platform for artists as well as a rich experience for visitors to the US Open,” Armory Show director Nicole Berry said in a statement.

The USTA’s Be Open campaign, which began in 2020, has been dedicated to showing underrepresented artists, and this partnership with the Armory Show continues that focus with showings of work by Gerald Chukwuma (presented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery), Jose Dávila (Sean Kelly), Luzene Hill (K Art), Carolyn Salas (Mrs.), and Myles Nurse (Half Gallery).

One of the most interesting works on view at Armory Off-Site is Chukwuma’s piece OGADILIGMMA (2021), which draws from Nigerian folk traditions as a way to speak to the painful histories of the transatlantic slave trade. In the work, a crude sculpture of a head and torso is studded with pieces of metal and other media that the artist found washed ashore from the Atlantic onto the beaches of Lagos. The sculpture hearkens back to Uli art traditions of Nigeria’s Igbo people; many of these traditions were brought to the U.S. via enslaved people who passed them onto their descendants. Now known as “memory ware,” in Chukwuma’s hands, this tradition of creating beautiful objects from found materials evokes the heartbreaking loss that echoes across the Atlantic.

Nurse’s piece NOW I WON (2022) is a more site-specific installation. A green figure of metal, welded in a net-type pattern is about to strike with their blue racket. “I used Billy Jean King as a reference,” Nurse told ARTnews. After sorting through several images of King mid-serve, he struck upon a dynamic image that he then rendered in 3D.

Making the work for the US Open space was a more touching process than Nurse initially expected. Because of where NOW I WON is sited, the bust of Arthur Ashe can be viewed right through the sculpture. “That I got to make a work for the space as an African-American-Caribbean artist,” he said, “that was pretty powerful for me. [Ashe] was the first Black man to win the US Open.”

Even still, Nurse said he was happy to see people interact with his work during the visits that he’s made to the site. “Seeing people and kids engaging with it, even hugging the leg, it’s just all been a real treat—an honor,” he said.