The Pickleball Craze Meets Art and Culture

One of the most interesting outcomes of the pickleball craze has been an unlikely partnership between the sport and art, music and culture. Pickleball has popped up at art festivals, at museums and integrated into concert venues.

Painting the Corners of the Court

Florida-based painter Erin Curry picked up pickleball in the Spring of 2021. In no time, the sport made its way into her art. Curry paints paddles and pickleballs, contrasting their shape with the sharp lines of the court, selling her work in an online shop, which currently features 18 pickleball paintings from $250.

New York City-based artist Mike Jacobs has an entire tab on his website labeled “pickleball art.” Jacobs’s drawings feature abstract takes on pickleball courts, paddles and equipment. Staying in New York, Nick Savides isn’t quite as dedicated to painting the sport as Jacobs. He does, however, currently offer an oil-painting titled “Pickleball” for $2600. Yes, you read that right.

Monuments and Museums Get in on the Craze

Rodin be damned. At an Austin event last month, footwear brand K-Swiss brought a “Museum of Pickleball” to life. The exhibit featured pickleball themed takes on classic statues. Yes, “The Dinker” was on display.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts opened pickleball courts in July. Players can take in the beautiful structure and then head over to the 108-year-old Greco-Roman-style building on the other side of the property.

It was only for a few days, but the National Mall hosted pop-up pickleball courts in late September. Participants got the chance to hit drop shots with the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument in the backdrop.

In a slightly-more-conventional pickleball-museum collaboration, the Collier Museum in Naples, FL offered an exhibit dedicated to the history of the sport last year. The exhibit, located in the U.S. Open’s host city, showcased equipment and artifacts from the sport’s invention nearly sixty years ago through its recent spike in popularity.

Music and More

Sure, pickleball themed restaurants like Chicken N Pickle offer visitors the chance dink before drinking. But across the country, a handful of venues are combining pickleball with more interesting offerings.

Lake Oswego, OR concert venue At The Garage announced in February that it was building pickleball courts. Music and pickleball also meet at Disco Court in West Hollywood, CA. Located on the roof of the La Peer Hotel, this venue offers pickleball courts in the middle of a disco bar. 

Midwestern chain Smash Park has too many offerings to count. In addition to their pickleball courts, they host karaoke, trivia nights and murder-mystery parties. Also in the Midwest, Lucky Shots Pickleball Club in Minneapolis offers pickleball courts surrounded by pop-art installations and décor. According to its founder, Peter Remes, the facility is just as much about the art as it is about the sport.

“What I do has nothing to do with pickleball. It’s immersion in arts and culture that creates with a space in a physiological manner, so when they walk in they feel something,” Remes said in an interview with the New York Times.

And of course, no article about the intersection of pickleball with arts and entertainment would be complete without this shot of Las Vegas’s $2.3 billion entertainment venue, the Sphere.