March 20, 2026
This month kicks off March Madness and the road to the Men’s NCAA Final Four. Around 70,000 people are predicted to flock to Indianapolis between April 4 and 6 for the tournament. In 49 other states it’s just basketball…but this is Indiana, and the sport’s legacy and roots run deep. At Newfields, art and sports collide in The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, free to the public year-round and open dawn ‘til dusk.
An Iconic Part of Indianapolis’ Cultural Fabric
Free Basket has been an integral component of the Fairbanks Park since it opened to the public in 2010. A site-specific commission for Newfields, the work welcomes visitors arriving at the park by car and can also be seen when driving from nearby 38th Street. In this way, the piece serves as a visual beacon for Newfields and the Fairbanks Park for everyone passing our campus.
Free Basket is the first public commission in the United States by Los Carpinteros, a Cuban collective consisting of artists Dagoberto Rodríguez and Marco Castillo known for its whimsical designs that draw from Cuban architecture and vernacular imagery. As art students in Havana in the early 1990s, Rodríguez and Castillo frequently lacked the supplies to make traditional works such as paintings. For this reason, they created sculptures and structures with wood that could be salvaged from buildings or cut from trees. Their fellow students began referring to them as “the carpenters” (los carpinteros), and the name stuck.
Los Carpinteros’s work for Fairbanks Park consists of twenty-four blue and red steel arches that mimic the trajectories of two bouncing basketballs. The arches terminate with two basketball hoops, and both the hoops and the court itself conform exactly to regulation height and size standards. Meant to convey the dynamism and movement of a game in progress, the work acknowledges the centrality of basketball to Indiana and Indianapolis history.
The title Free Basket describes a game that takes place outside the standard rules of basketball, which is materially reflected in the court’s obstructed design that would not allow anyone to play in a typical way. The artists have described this “freedom” from rules and strictures as a strain of subtle social commentary in the work, imagining a world with more possibilities for all people. In choosing to work collectively under a single name, Los Carpinteros also eschews the traditional idea of the solitary, genius artist, arguing that visionary work can be created by many people working in tandem.
“Even a painter who says he spends all his time alone in his studio, making work that he says is entirely his own—it’s not true,” Rodríguez has said. “There is always a web of influences, of knowledge, of history, even of something as simple as supplies. Nothing exists alone, in art or anywhere else. It’s a matter of practical necessity.” In their engagement with ideas of collective action and personal freedom, Los Carpinteros is a decidedly utopian project, bringing a sense of optimism and joy to their reimagining of the urban landscape.
In 2025, Free Basket was the background for the cover photo of Sports Illustrated’s annual WNBA preview issue, which featured Indiana Fever players Kelsey Mitchell, Aliyah Boston, Caitlin Clark, and DeWanna Bonner. Celebrating the Fever’s status as the “most-watched” team in the WNBA, the issue showcased Free Basket to national and international audiences, cementing its place as a beloved and essential component of public art in Indianapolis.
