The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL., will host Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, 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, and Alison Saar.
The exhibition explores the global sport and its cultural impact through the lens of over 80 artists. It is on view from Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, through Sunday, March 9, 2025.
The Norton’s exhibition is a collaboration with two New York arts organizations, The FLAG Art Foundation and The Church, where three unique exhibitions were created around one comprehensive theme of boxing. The Norton’s presentation will include 60 new works, bringing the exhibition total to more than 110 artworks, including pieces by Hernan Bas, Amoako Boafo, Katherine Bradford, Zoë Buckman, Rosalyn Drexler, Jeffrey Gibson, Allegra Pacheco, and Gary Simmons, each of whom have never showcased work at the Norton prior to Strike Fast, Dance Lightly.
“Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing is unlike anything we’ve done at the Norton,” said Ghislain d’Humières, Kenneth C. Griffin Director and CEO of the Norton Museum of Art. “The exhibition has a raw intensity that visitors will feel the minute they step into the galleries, exploring themes such as power and resilience that will speak to both sports fanatics and art lovers alike.”
Featuring more than 100 artworks from the 1870s through the present day, the Norton’s one-of-a-kind presentation will illuminate 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.
One of the oldest works in the exhibition is a short film of two cats “boxing” by William K.L. Dickson and William Heise, 1894, showing the humor in the sport. Edward Hopper’s (Study of a Boxer), 1899 – 1906, highlights the power and athleticism of competitors. George Bellows’ Introducing John L. Sullivan, 1923, depicts a ring announcer and evokes the theatrical energy infused between the four corners of the ring ahead of a match-up.
Among the roster of cutting-edge and leading contemporary artists, the exhibition features drawings by the legendary Muhammad Ali, offering an insider’s perspective that most have not experienced. Ali is generally considered the greatest heavyweight champion of all time and is revered for his skills in the ring and his post-retirement activism.
Additional highlights include thought-provoking pieces like Jeffrey Gibson’s Manifest Destiny, 2016, a repurposed punching bag inspired by Native American visual culture. Gibson, a Colorado-born, New York-based artist, is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is of Cherokee descent. Harry Benson’s iconic photo of Ali with The Beatles in 1964 introduces the intersection of the sport and celebrity fame. The exhibition will also showcase an example of Zoë Buckman’s popular series in which she adorns boxing gloves with textiles associated with femininity and domestic settings. The embroidered additions to the objects evoke a contrast between the hard and soft, strength and vulnerability, and violence and protection.
An accompanying publication for Strike Fast, Dance Lightly — a collaborative effort among The Church, The FLAG Art Foundation, and the Norton Museum of Art – will include essays by American artist Eric Fischl and Sara Cochran, Chief Curator at The Church; a photo essay by Arden Sherman, Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Norton; an essay by award-winning New York Times sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, who extensively covered Ali’s career; and a panel interview with featured artists Alvin Armstrong, Angela Dufresne, and Caleb Hahne Quintana, moderated by FLAG’s director, Jonathan Rider.
“The intersection of art and boxing presents a new avenue of exploration for our community,” said Sherman, reflecting on the sport’s global, multi-cultural presence. “Pairing artmaking with boxing locates the Norton as a site for constructive discussions around our human instinct to fight and prevail, and there is no better metaphor to engage in during the current moment of American history.”
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing at the Norton Museum of Art was curated by Arden Sherman, Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, with Tiera Ndlovu, Curatorial Research Associate.
Support for this exhibition at the Norton was provided by the Priscilla and John Richman Endowment for American Art, The Lunder Foundation – Peter and Paula Lunder Family, and the Milton and Sheila Fine Endowment for Contemporary Art.
Pictures Courtesy of the Norton Museum of Art