While last season didn’t end—or frankly, start—happily for billionaire hedge-funder Steve Cohen and the New York Mets, the baseball team he bought in 2020 for $2.4 billion, it’s almost spring again in Queens. This year, Cohen appears to be betting that he can draw fans back to the ballpark with an aggressive series of giveaways for fans, 19 in total.
The most exciting, and unusual, are two “artist series” giveaways on May 25 and July 13 for a beach tote by painter and former art dealer Joel Mesler and a bucket hat by conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, respectively.
Related Articles
For Mesler, the series feels like a natural fit.
“A lot of baseball fans already have the collecting bug,” he told ARTnews recently. “I learned how to collect at the age of 6 through baseball cards. It seemed obvious to connect artists with the Mets in some capacity.”
As Mesler told it, the project grew out of a trip to the ballpark. Last season, Cohen invited Johnson, Mesler, Jeff Koons, and other artists to watch a game from the executive box. There, the conversation turned to Cohen and his wife Alexandra’s art collection, and New York as the de-facto capital of the art world. Cohen, Mesler said, came up with the idea of the giveaways and Sophie Cohen, his daughter and an associate director at Gagosian, acted as an informal curator.
The Cohens are, of course, ARTnews Top 200 collectors with a collection spanning world-class works by Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and Jackson Pollock. It’s probably a safe bet there are a few Johnson and Mesler works in there too.
Mesler’s tote bag is based on a recent work featuring baseballs depicted as mylar balloons in classic Mets blue and orange. “It’s just the perfect Mets image,” he said. “I thought it would be nice for 15,000 people to walk around with balloon baseballs.”
It’s not the first dip into merchandise for Mesler, who partnered with Hong Kong brand Izzue in 2021 for a capsule collection of four printed T-shirts, two bucket hats, and a tote bag that featured Mesler’s bright colorful images. Last year, he collaborated with artist and designer Carlton DeWoody to produce a limited-edition T-shirt to celebrate Cultured magazine’s Hamptons issue. Mesler has also designed a plate for the Artist Plate Project, where artists design limited-edition plates sold for $250 as a way to “provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and housing instability.”
Johnson, too, has had his hand in many collaborations. In addition to designing a plate for the Artist Plate Project, Johnson worked with Stella McCartney in early 2021 to produce a limited edition T-shirt based on a work-on-paper using a color he developed called “Anxious Red.” He also has sold a T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, and a hat, based on his famed “Anxious Men” series, which are still available via Hauser & Wirth, his gallery. Prior to that, Johnson collaborated with Liz Swig of LizWorks to produce a limited edition line of jewelry, including gold and titanium cuffs, signet rings, ring bands, and necklaces, based on the same series. Those items retailed for $8,500 to $30,000.
Mesler said he isn’t anticipating his tote bag will gain much traction among collectors, but he wouln’t count out Johnson’s giveaway.
“We’ll see what happens but I imagine people will realize the Rashid Johnson bucket hats are quite valuable. I wonder if there will be a secondary market for one,” he mused. “This is my dealer hat talking.”
Typically, giveaways go out to the first 15,000 fans in attendance, so if you want one, better get to the game early.