Hank Willis Thomas, ‘Guernica,’ 2016.
courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; © Hank Willis Thomas; photo courtesy the artist
What in the wild, wild world of sports is going on here?
Sports and art coming together across America?
These are not typical bedfellows. Their separation begins in middle school. The art kids go one way, the jocks the other.
Sports fans and art lovers can follow their separate tracks through the course of long lives, rarely intersecting. Occasionally around movies. Occasionally around music. Fashion–sneakers–perhaps. But in an unusual occurrence, art museums across the country–enough to represent a trend, not a coincidence–are inviting sports fans into the world of fine art with exhibitions showing how these opposites can attract.
Get In The Game
Through February 18, 2025, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture,” exploring the powerful—and sometimes contentious—place of athletics in American life. “Get in the Game,” together with six sports-related companion exhibitions, is the museum’s most expansive presentation dedicated to a single subject to date with more than 200 artworks and design objects.
Viewers will discover the sense of community found in depictions of pickup basketball games, minor league baseball teams, neighborhood swimming clubs or a lineup of fellow surfers. Audiences will also encounter artists and designers inspired by athletes advancing conversations about gender, race and identity, as well as artworks responding to the remarkable achievements of sports figures such as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Colin Kaepernick, Diana Nyad, Venus Williams, and Zinedine Zidane. Woven throughout “Get in the Game” will be stunning works of contemporary art and design, interactive installations, and historical videos reconsidering political and cultural issues through the lens of sports, athleticism, competition, and play.
Highlights of “Get in the Game” include moving artworks by artist/athletes Matthew Barney, Rosalyn Drexler, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Savanah Leaf, Mario Ayala, Shaun Leonardo, and Lucy McRae, who have been influenced by their experiences in sports such as football, volleyball, skateboarding, wrestling, tennis, and track.
Museumgoers will be able to play interactive artworks by contemporary artists: Maurizio Cattelan’s 22-person foosball table, Stadium (1991), and Gabriel Orozco’s Ping Pond Table (1998), a four-way ping-pong table with a square pool in place of a net.
Beyond fine art, “Get in the Game” features dozens of innovative designs for sports gear, gaming and fashion, from Formula One racecar steering wheels to a 2022 ensemble from Virgil Abloh’s final Louis Vuitton collection. Fans can appreciate the artistry and unforgettable design of Michael Johnson’s gold running shows and Nike’s original Air Jordan basketball shoes. Amateur athletes can also follow the awe-inspiring design evolution and technological advances of surfboards, tennis racquets and football helmets.
Reflecting the evolving field of play, the exhibition integrates meaningful designs from recent years, such as the Cheetah Xceed prosthetic running leg, developed by biomedical engineer Van Phillips (himself an amputee), and the Refugee Nation Flag, designed by artist Yara Said, a Syrian refugee now based in Amsterdam.
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly
George Bellows (American, 1882 – 1925), ‘Club Night,’ 1907. Oil on canvas. 43 x 53 1/8 in. (109.2 x 134.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Collection, 1982.76.1.
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Stick and move at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL where “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” represents the largest comprehensive survey of artistic representations of boxing in more than 20 years, featuring paintings, videos, sculptures, and works on paper by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Alison Saar, Gary Simmons, Jeffrey Gibson, and Amoako Boafo. The exhibition explores the global sport and its cultural impact through the lens of over 80 artists–including drawings by Muhammad Ali!
Featuring more than 100 artworks from the 1870s through the present day, the Norton’s one-of-a-kind presentation illuminates the connections between boxing and society, while underscoring the rich history of a centuries-old sport and its participants, through all its complexities. The exhibition showcases artworks that lend boxing, and its legends, nuance and intimacy. Within “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly,” the boxer and the act of boxing serve as a metaphor for a wide range of socio-political issues through a series of distinct categories: the body, “in the ring,” the artist as boxer, tools, and ephemera.
The exhibition can be seen through Sunday, March 9, 2025.
A Vision Of Sports
Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum picks up the ball and runs with “Good Sports: The Wisdom & Fun of Fair Play,” an exhibition weaving together art created by global and local visionary artists focused on both sports and play imagery, as well as film, photography, sculpture, fascinating sports medicine factoids, and quotes reflecting the wisdom of sports legends. The museum defines “visionary artists” as, “self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.”
“Good Sports” brings a wide and creative view of both the history and current state of sports—one full of fun, wisdom, and passion—all to exalt sports as one of humankind’s most fabulous avenues for becoming our best selves. While praising the capacity of sports to impart important ethical lessons of fairness and civility, this exhibition will not ignore the dark underbelly of competition and its potential for corruption: rigging, drugging, greed, gambling, injury, exclusion, and woeful race and gender discrimination.
The exhibition will remain on view through August 31, 2025.
Skate Or Die
J. Grant Brittain is one of the most widely recognized and influential skateboard photographers. In 1987, “The Push,” a photo of Tod Swank, made the cover of Transworld magazine, becoming one of the most recognizable skateboarding photos. The Orlando Museum of Art presents Brittain’s first museum exhibition retrospective offering a chance to see a collection of works from the 1980s which has inspired subsequent generations.
Brittain most prominently captured photos of an 11-year-old Tony Hawk and was instrumental in documenting the formative years of the legendary skateboarder’s career. The two have remained life-long friends.
The photos will remain on display through January 5, 2025.
Remember These?
Michael Jordan Nike basketball poster.
Courtesy of Poster House museum.
Poster House in New York, the first museum in the United States dedicated to the global history of posters, presents “Just Frame It: How Nike Turned Sports Stars into Superheroes” through February 23, 2025. Gen-X sports kids will receive a full-on nostalgia trip through the wildly popular posters that wallpapered the bedrooms of their childhoods.
Jordan–lots of Jordan–Charles Barkley, Andre Agassi, Nike’s roster of celebrity athletes returns to their prime through 60 posters capturing a cultural moment where sports stars ascended to rival rock stars and movie stars for fame, money, and attention, never to go back.
The successful marketing of individual athletes, including through posters like this, with Nike at the forefront of the aesthetics and branding and money, signified a sea change in sports and sports fandom. No longer was the team primary, the player was.
Après Ski
Known as “Ski Town USA,” Steamboat Springs, CO’s art museum presents “Art in Sport: Motion, Emotion, Moments, and Light,” showcasing photography, sculpture, paintings, and prints capturing the drama, passion, and dynamic motion of sports. Shred fresh powder in the morning then explore the intersection of art and sport through the work of prominent local artists as well as those with ties to Steamboat Springs and Colorado.
The presentation opens on December 6, 2024, running through April 12, 2025.
Sport = Art
In a prelude to Art Basel Miami Beach the first week of December, OG4ever gallery presents its latest exhibit, “Sport = Art,” in the heart of Wynwood. Opening on Saturday, November 16th, this showcase reveals the deep connection between athleticism and artistry, paying homage to sports as a testament to physical excellence and cultural expression.
From bronze sculptures made from the actual molds of the hands and feet of soccer legend Pelé to paintings of iconic moments in sports, these international artists share their passion for creating artworks that redefine legendary figures and moments in sports history.
“Sports Artists” To Know
Ernie Barnes, ‘The Devil and Doodazzle Dakins,’ circa 1980. Oil on canvas Sight 27 3/8 x 21 1/8 inches (69.6 x 53.7 cm)
Courtesy Doyle Auctions
Sports fans looking to engage with the fine arts, but not knowing where to begin are advised to start here:
Sports has remained a constant in the life and work of Ernie Barnes (1938-2009). Studying art while playing football at North Carolina Central University, Barnes was drafted by the Baltimore Colts in 1959. Though injuries limited his NFL playing career to a five seasons, during his tenure, Barnes befriended New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who would become a notable patron, commissioning Barnes to create new works and helping launch the young artist’s first solo exhibition.
Basketball is a favored subject of Barnes, and on November 20, 2024, Doyle Auction House hosts a sale featuring his painting The Devil and Doodazzle Dakins (1980).
Leroy Nieman (1921–2012) is the best known of all “sports artists.” His vividly colored, brushy, impressions of sailing, baseball, golf, Ali, and the 20th century’s greatest athlete icons are instantly recognizable. Number two on the list would be George Bellows (1882–1925) and his boxing paintings.
Hank Willis Thomas’ social justice art practice routinely calls on sports when demonstrating America’s racial inequalities. Gary Simmons does the same through boxing rings and shoes and gloves.
Former major leaguer Micah Johnson (b. 1990) has been making major waves in contemporary art, particularly in the worlds of digital art and NFTs.
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