At two games this season, the first 15,000 spectators will receive the merchandise. The New York Mets, owned by Steve Cohen, have revealed their 2024 promotional merchandise lineup, which includes joint ventures with artists Joel Mesler and Rashid Johnson. The first 15,000 fans at the Mets game against the San Francisco Giants at Citi Field will receive a beach tote designed by Mesler, who is best known for his vibrant canvases that combine text and graphic patterns. Five baseballs painted like inflatable balloons with the words “New York” in the team’s iconic orange on a blue background—possibly the bottom of a pool—can be seen in an image of the tote that was posted on the Major League Baseball website.
“It’s the ideal representation of the Mets,” Mesler told ARTNews. “I thought it would be fun for fifteen thousand people to carry balloon baseballs around.”
The first 15,000 spectators at the team’s July 13 game against the Colorado Rockies at Citi Field will also receive a bucket hat, another product of the Rashid Johnson collaboration. A photo of the giveaway has not yet been released by the MLB website.
Even lower than the artists’ auction records, tickets for the games featuring the artist-designed giveaways are available online for as little as $25. According to the Artnet Price Database, an acrylic painting by Mesler sold at Christie’s New York in May 2022 for almost $1 million, more than 505 percent above estimates. A Johnson, RashidJohnson’s 2023 brute painting “Message to Our Folks” examines the African American experience through his characteristic abstract style, and it is presently on display in the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Heritage Hall in Washington, D.C. The artist also debuted New Poetry, a grid-like installation, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York last November.
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