Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) and adidas Basketball present CAMH COURT, the first-ever playable basketball court in an art museum, commissioned and designed by renowned Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. In addition to the custom court, Hancock has designed the backboards and basketballs, extending the cast of characters that populate his fantastical world into new dimensions.
In celebration of the March–April 2023 NCAA Men’s Final Four® in Houston, CAMH COURT uniquely conforms to the signature dimensions of CAMH’s Brown Foundation Gallery through canting a regulation-size court into a parallelogram. Emerging from Hancock’s hyper-imagination, the court is an immersive and uniquely spirited environment where players might dunk from the three-point line or lose themselves in the embrace of Hancock’s striped Bringback characters, which swarm from baseline to baseline.
Hancock has a storied history with CAMH, from his landmark first solo exhibition, Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Life and Death of #1, in 2001; the group show, Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of Comics in Contemporary Art, in 2003; to his 2014 retrospective, Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing. Hancock’s shows have continually been some of the most celebrated in the institution’s almost 75-year history. His work creates new worlds for audiences to explore, and CAMH COURT offers an extension of this, again welcoming audiences into a space of fantasy and play.
CAMH COURT is on view and playable March 18–April 28, 2023. Please note: the court will not be available during the Museum’s private events and programmed hours. For more information on CAMH’s events and programs, check our updated hours of operation here and view our calendar here.
Visitor Guidelines
- Visitors of all ages are welcome to play, with a special youth court available to those ages 12 and under. The court is open play on a first-come, first-served basis unless otherwise programmed. Players under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian present.
- All players must wear rubber-soled shoes to walk and play on the court. Those without the right shoewear will be given slipover shoe covers to wear.
- All players must complete a release of liability form. Players who are under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian complete the form.
- Basketballs can be checked out from the front desk after providing a photo ID. Outside basketballs are not allowed.
Image Gallery
About Trenton Doyle Hancock
Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) is an artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Raised in Paris, Texas, Hancock earned his BFA from Texas A&M University-Commerce and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, at the time becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in the prestigious survey.
For almost two decades, Hancock has been constructing his own fantastical narrative that continues to develop and inform his prolific artistic output. Part fictional, part autobiographical, Hancock’s work pulls from his own personal experience, art historical canon, comics and superheroes, pulp fiction, and myriad pop culture references, resulting in a complex amalgamation of characters and plots possessing universal concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and all the gray in between.
As a whole, Hancock’s highly developed cast of characters acts out a complex mythological battle, creating an elaborate cosmology that embodies his unique aesthetic ideals, musings on color, language, emotions and ultimately, good versus evil. Hancock’s mythology has also been translated through performance, even onto the stage in an original ballet, Cult of Color: Call to Color, commissioned by Ballet Austin, and through site-specific murals for the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
About adidas Basketball
adidas Basketball believes that basketball lives at the intersections. The points in which sport meets culture, meets fashion, music and art. Basketball has inspiration and influence on millions of people off the court, just as much as it has on the court. To bring the two together is an incredible opportunity that we’re excited to help bring to life.
adidas is a global leader in the sporting goods industry. Headquartered in Herzogenaurach/Germany, the company employs more than 61,000 people across the globe and generated sales of €21.2 billion in 2021.
Support
CAMH COURT is presented in collaboration with adidas Basketball.
CAMH COURT is created in partnership with Creative Sports Concepts.
CAMH COURT is made possible by the patrons, benefactors, and donors to CAMH’s Major Exhibition Fund: Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Sissy and Denny Kempner, Dillon Kyle and Sam Lasseter, MD Anderson Foundation, Rea Charitable Trust, The Sarofim Foundation, The Stolbun Family, Louisa Stude Sarofim, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is partly funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
Thank you to the partners and supporters of CAMH COURT programming: Grind Basketball, Houston Rockets, and Tradeblock.
Free admission for all is generously supported by Mara and Erick Calderon.
In-kind support is provided by Heist Agency and Peter Molick.
