A Knicks Good-Luck Charm Is Now a Guggenheim Exhibit
By Vittoria Benzine
New York’s Guggenheim Museum is getting in on the city’s Knicks-mania. Tomorrow through Sunday, the institution will display the viral bag that fans believe brought the Knicks victory.
Jordyn Woods, fiancée of Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, designed the faux ostrich handbag in question for her fashion brand Woods by Jordan ahead of the NBA Playoffs. Named the Tux Clutch Mini, it comes in black crocodile, 212 Blue, and Summer Citrus. Woods debuted the latter hue while supporting the Knicks at the NBA Playoffs.
She kept the tradition alive into the NBA Finals. The only series match where it didn’t appear, however, was Game 3—due to enhanced security measures surrounding Donald Trump’s attendance. As you may recall, that was the only Finals game the Knicks lost before winning the series. That correlation quickly became causation in the eyes of fans hungry for the team’s first win in 53 years.
Since then, the Tux Clutch Mini has become a sensation. Last week, Towns told Seth Meyers it belongs in the Smithsonian, and Woods snapped New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani posing with the bag at the Knicks ticker-tape parade. Soon after, Towns reiterated, “We gotta put this in the Whitney or the Guggenheim,” while cradling the bag in an Instagram reel.
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“The Guggenheim has 24 hours to respond,” civil rights lawyer and author Ashley Oliver playfully commented. “We’re delighted and on it!” ascendant Guggenheim director Mariët Westermann wrote back. Indeed, the museum reached out.
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns and his fiancée Jordyn Woods pose with Guggenheim director Mariët Westermann at the museum. Photo: Davia de Croix, courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Woods, meanwhile, has floated the notion of retiring the bag—though not without a victory lap, it seems, involving a five-day display in the Guggenheim’s third-floor Café Rebay.
“The Guggenheim is one of my favorite places, and I never imagined that something I designed would one day be on view at the museum,” Woods said in press materials. “So many of us are still in shock over the Knicks’s historic run, and seeing the lucky bag at the Guggenheim somehow makes it all feel real.”
Westermann added via email: “This project came together through an extraordinary team effort, building on our friendship with Karl and Jordyn, which began during our Rashid Johnson exhibition at the Guggenheim and grew as we recognized the NBA and the NBA Players Association at the Fall 2025 Guggenheim gala. The speedy interactions, creativity, and collaboration between our teams brought the idea to life virtually overnight.”
In press materials, the Guggenheim noted that this lucky Knicks bag will jive with the wider museum, too, where numerous basketball-adjacent artworks are on view—including Lin Yilin‘s multimedia Monad (2018), Tschabalala Self’s Knicks-themed textile Sprewell (2020), and the two-artist video installation Zidane, a 21st century portrait (2006).
This week alone may mark fans’ only chance to see Woods’s bag in the flesh. As far as the Guggenheim knows, the Knicks relic won’t tour.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.