SFMOMA's Get in the Game Exhibition Shows That Sports Is No Museum Piece More than 200 compelling artworks and design objects focus on sports, including broadcast By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Tuesday, November 26, 2024 - 7:00 am
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San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art is hosting Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture until Feb. 18, 2025.
The U.S. is home to dozens of sports-themed museums, from the California Surf Museum to the New England Ski Museum. There are the iconic ones, of course - Cooperstown, NY's Baseball Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH - as well as more-nuanced venues - the Museum of Polo in Lake Worth, FL, the World Kite Museum & Hall of Fame in Long Beach, WA. But is sports actually gallery-worthy?
San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) believes so. From Oct. 19, 2024, to Feb. 18, 2025, it's hosting Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, which explores and chronicles the powerful - and sometimes contentious - place of athletics in contemporary life and art.
The Broadcast-Sports Angle Although the depictions of sports, produced by artists and designers inspired by athletes, are important, there are also elements that reflect broadcast's place in that universe. For instance, the exhibition features four screens showing short video clips and photography of major events in sports history and includes references to broadcast media, such as ABC's Wide World of Sports.
There are definitely connections to broadcast sports in the exhibition design, says Rebecca Herman, assistant director, communications, SFMOMA, and in some of the specific artworks as well.
Paul Pfeiffer's video installation Caryatid (Pacquiao) refers to a Manny Pacquiao boxing match.
In addition, some of the contemporary artworks in the exhibition are inspired by televised sports events:
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's Zidane, a 21st century portrait is a two-channel, 90-minute video using footage from 17 cameras that tracked soccer star Zinedine Zidane during the infamous 2005 match where he was sent off the field after headbutting an opponent.
Tara Mateik's video installation reenacts the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, including references to the audio commentary.
Paul Pfeiffer's video Caryatid (Pacquiao) offers edited TV coverage of a Manny Pacquiao boxing match to make it look like he's fighting an unseen opponent.
Rosalyn Drexler's painting Death of Benny Kid Paret depicts the demise of boxer Paret, with six vignettes that mimic a TV screen.
And More Audiences will also encounter conversations advancing issues around gender, race, and identity, as well as artworks responding to the achievements of such sports figures as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Colin Kaepernick, Diana Nyad, Venus Williams, and Zidane.
Gabriel Orozco's Ping Pond Table invites museum visitors to participate.
There is also an interactive component. Viewers are able to play with 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.
In addition, real-life items - Michael Johnson's gold running shoes, Nike's original Air Jordan basketball shoes - are presented as art, along with exhibits chronicling the design evolution and technological advances of surfboards, tennis racquets, and football helmets. Reflecting changes on the fields of play, the exhibition integrates more-esoteric designs from recent years, such as the Cheetah Xceed prosthetic running leg, developed by biomedical engineer Van Phillips (himself an amputee).
Sam McKinniss's painting Ameriquest Field in Arlington, TX, Sept. 3, 2006 depicts baseball fans in the stands.
The show - SFMOMA's largest-ever single-subject exhibition - has a companion book. The identically titled tome examines how sports unites people through shared emotional and physical experiences and sparks conversations on gender, race, money, the human body, and the drive to compete and win. Topics range from the intersection of race and mental health and the role of stadiums in society to the history of adaptive sports and the data revolution in baseball. The book also revisits key moments in sports history, such as Colin Kaepernick's protest, Simone Biles's withdrawal from the 2020 Olympics, the first-ever Gay Games, and Brandi Chastain's World Cup win.
San Francisco and the Bay Area may be losing sports teams - the NFL Raiders left Oakland for Las Vegas in 2020; the MLB Athletics played their final game at the Oakland Coliseum in September and will play in Sacramento for the next three or more seasons - but the NFL 49ers, the MLB Giants, and the NHL Sharks are still there. Now the area also has an artistic rendering of sports that's as unique as it gets.
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SFMOMA's Get in the Game Exhibition Shows That Sports Is No Museum Piece More than 200 compelling artworks and design objects focus on sports, including broadcast By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
