THE LIBERTY PORTRAITS: A MONUMENT TO THE 2024 CHAMPIONS
On display at Barclays Center Suite Level
This series of portraits celebrates the New York Liberty’s legendary 2024 championship team. Created by renowned American artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, the images reflect the power of women’s leadership, diversity, family, and an unyielding love for basketball.
Though the Liberty roster has since evolved, this piece focuses on a selection of players that were integral to the Liberty’s championship run, and thus, critical figures in a historic moment in New York sports. A selection of these Liberty players from their title season is depicted across a series of larger-than-life adjacent portraits: the first of a player in uniform, and the second among chosen family. For the latter, Frazier visited each player in locations meaningful to them. This part of the project brought Frazier to the Bahamas, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, as well as locations in New York City and Brooklyn, showcasing the dimension and character that shape a basketball roster. Known for personal storytelling in her work, each of Frazier’s portraits are also accompanied by a first-person testimonial from a loved one, hand-selected by the players.
In the artist’s words, “this collaboration extends beyond fandom and the spectacle of sport; it's an act of celebrating and bearing witness to the full humanity of these championship players – their struggles, their triumphs, their lives outside the arena. I'm interested in creating a bridge between the fans and the team, deepening a sense of compassion and commanding the dignity and respect the team deserves. These portraits are intended to stand as beacons of women’s leadership and the power of sisterhood.”
The Liberty Portraits: A Monument to the 2024 Champions was commissioned by the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund and was originally presented in front of Barclays Center at the Ticketmaster Plaza in 2025.
About the Artist
LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982, Braddock, PA) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work in photography, video, performance, and installation addresses social justice, environmental racism, labor rights, and the American experience. Drawing on traditions of social documentary and conceptual photography, Frazier often collaborates with individuals and communities to tell powerful, deeply personal stories rooted in urgent social and political issues of everyday life.
Her work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and Europe, including at the Brooklyn Museum, ICA Boston, Seattle Art Museum, Musée des Arts Contemporains in Belgium, and Mudam Luxembourg. Major publications include The Notion of Family, And From the Coaltips A Tree Will Rise, The Last Cruze, and Flint Is Family In Three Acts, the latter earning her the inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize. Frazier’s art is held in major public collections such as MoMA, the Whitney, LACMA, and Centre Pompidou. She is a MacArthur Fellow and has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and TED, among others. She is represented by Gladstone Gallery (New York, Brussels) and Sant’Andrea de Scaphis (Rome).
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