Glenn Kaino, Sails, 2024. Concrete, stainless-steel armature, wood, basketball hoops, paint, 41 ft. 7.25 in. x 28 ft. 11.25 in. x 58 ft. 10.5 in. Commissioned by the LA Clippers for Intuit Dome. Photograph by Iwan Baan.
To offer this experience to the Inglewood community and millions of fans, the Clippers empowered art consultant Ruth Berson of Berson Studio LLC to engage a jury including members of the local community to select an all-star team of locally based artists: Refik Anadol, Glenn Kaino, Patrick Martinez, Michael Massenburg, Kyungmi Shin, and Jennifer Steinkamp.
“We designed Intuit Dome to be a place that brings people together,” said Zucker. “When it came to our public art, we wanted to deliver a collection that is as compelling to people well-versed in art as it is to a novice viewer. We are eager to make these unique works, from these amazing artists, available to everyone when Intuit Dome opens in August.”
Commenting on the selection process, Ruth Berson said, “Our goal has been to make Intuit Dome’s plaza a special place that brings world-class art to Inglewood and beyond, inviting people to gather and enjoy these artworks in a space that welcomes everyone. In commissioning these works, we started conversations with these extraordinary artists who have deep ties to Los Angeles and together reflect the make-up of the Inglewood community. We showed them the model of the Intuit Dome and its campus. They chose options for their sites, and over the course of a year, they refined their ideas into the major new artworks unveiled today.”
Adding to the creative experience of Intuit Dome, the Clippers commissioned MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winner Walter J. Hood, founder and creative director of Hood Design Studio, to design the landscape of Intuit Dome’s campus, internationally acclaimed fashion photographer and filmmaker Glen Luchford created player portrait photographs to be installed inside the arena, and renowned visual artist Jonas Wood to design the LA Clippers City Edition uniforms and court. At opening, Intuit Dome will also feature an exhibition of photographs by Catherine Opie, on loan from MOCA, evoking the experience of community.
Standing in front of the main entrance to Intuit Dome, Glenn Kaino’s massive sculpture Sails, made of painted steel and wood and measuring 41’ 7 ¼” by 28’ 11 ¼” by 58’ 10 ½”, looms in the form of the clipper ships that connected the world via the ocean’s trade routes. The historic clipper ships were propelled by the wind in their billowing sails, but in Kaino’s sculpture, the unfurled sails on the tall masts are made of backboards and hoops inspired by images of diverse courts around the world, both formal and improvisational. In this ship, basketball is the cultural wind that can connect us all. And as suggested in an interview the artist conducted with Ambassador Andrew Young, who alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used pick-up basketball games to help recruit young men to join the Civil Rights movement, both art and sports can propel today’s search for social justice.
The entire surface of the Intuit Dome itself, designed by the architectural firm AECOM, provides the background and material for Jennifer Steinkamp’s digital artwork Swoosh. Five animations will transform the surface of the dome, weaving fluidly around the structure’s geometric panels and referencing tangible yet invisible forces of nature such as wind and gravity. The dome will come alive with emotion as it lights up the night sky.
Bordering the Intuit Dome’s plaza, behind the campus’s outdoor community basketball court, stands a new digital artwork by Refik Anadol titled Living Arena, displayed on an LED screen 40 feet tall by 70 feet wide. Created in collaboration with cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms, the work presents a mesmerizing, continually changing data narrative in four chapters. The abstract images in each chapter visualize data from different sources. “Urban Dreams” features flight information from nearby LAX and other airports around the globe; “Nature Dreams” displays live weather data from Inglewood including wind direction, temperature, and humidity; “Culture Dreams” showcases player tracking data from historic Clippers games; and “California Landscape” highlights images from the state’s national parks. The AI-driven artwork provides a unique, ever-evolving visual experience that connects the digital and physical worlds through data.
Across the plaza from Living Arena will be Patrick Martinez’s sculpture Same Boat. Using one of the modern city’s most common visual forms—the neon sign—Martinez creates an image in glowing light, approximately nine feet square, that reproduces a statement by the late Civil Rights leader Whitney M. Young: “We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now.” Conveying faith in our shared humanity despite society’s forces of division, the work speaks to the spirit of inclusion while alluding playfully to the Clippers’ nautical team name.
On a wall adjacent to Same Boat, visitors will find Kyungmi Shin’s stained glass mosaic with stainless steel tracery, Spring to Life. For this work, measuring 22.75 feet by 7.5 feet, Shin drew inspiration from Centinela Springs, the now-vanished water source in South Los Angeles that once supported the Tongva people and the land they cultivated. Creating a narrative that connects the past to today’s LA, Shin superimposes the silhouettes of basketball players over her depiction of Centinela Springs, suggesting the layers of human experience embedded in the site of the new arena.
For many visitors to the Intuit Dome, or motorists driving by, the first artwork to come into view will be Michael Massenburg’s joyful mural of printed porcelain enamel on steel panel, titled Cultural Playground. Installed so that it faces outward from the campus, the immense montage of the sights and sounds of Los Angeles, 25 feet tall and 100 feet wide, expresses the artist’s belief that “the two most profound things that unite people are the arts and sports.” Figures of basketball, tennis, and soccer players, singers, musicians, and dancers play across the mural, in settings that range from Inglewood’s legendary Fox Theatre to the red-lanterned plazas of Chinatown to the city’s parks.
