Exhibition · Brownsville
Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC: Jazmine Hayes's "I Am Protected" Fills the New Multi-Service Center
Brooklyn artist Jazmine Hayes's four-part "I Am Protected," commissioned through Percent for Art, marks the entrances and garden of the new $128 million Brownsville Multi-Service Center, using braids, cowry shells and a Moko Jumbie mural to explore protection and healing.
By NBT Editors · 2026-10-16
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New York City unveiled the Brownsville Multi-Service Center on September 28. The $128 million building is a four-story, 60,000-square-foot, all-electric facility at 444 Thomas S. Boyland Street, between Pitkin and East New York avenues. City officials say it was finished two years ahead of schedule and $10 million under budget. The Neighborhood Association for Inter-Cultural Affairs (NAICA) will operate it, and it will house the offices of Brooklyn Community Board 16.
The building carries "I Am Protected," a public art commission by Brooklyn artist Jazmine Hayes, who was born and raised in East New York. It was commissioned through the Department of Cultural Affairs' Percent for Art program, which since 1982 has required that one percent of the budget for eligible City-funded construction go to public art. The project received the NYC Public Design Commission's 43rd Annual Award for Excellence in Design in 2025.
The commission has four works, placed throughout the building and its community garden. "In my mothers' garden" shows a person planting a seed while a deity pours water back into the land, with a patterned map behind them that mirrors an aerial view of NYCHA's Brownsville Houses. "I am divinely guided" is a suspended spiral of 444 resin cowry shells, 111 of them made with upcycled plastics, tying the shells' history as currency across Black and Brown diasporas to water and environmental justice.
"Like the seeds in my cornrows" draws on storytelling and braid maps. It layers braid-pattern motifs designed by Brownsville youth over panels that replicate the mapping used in the community garden. "I shall grow tall to the skies" is a large mural of a Moko Jumbie, a stilt walker rooted in West African and Caribbean traditions and regarded as a protector. Hayes said she wants every visitor and young person to meet an affirmation of curiosity, care and imagination at each entry point.
Beyond the art, the center has 10 office spaces, three conference rooms that can be combined into one large meeting space, a commercial kitchen, a 1,600-square-foot outdoor garden and green roofs. The Department of Social Services says the center will open to the community in the coming months.
