Exhibitions
Get in the Game, or when sport becomes visual culture
The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture , an exhibition that explores the multiple connections between athletic and sporting performance and artistic creation. The show proposes a reflection on how sport, beyond competition, has become a powerful generator of cultural imaginaries, collective identities, and shared narratives.
The exhibition, which runs until August 23, coincides with several major international sporting events taking place in Miami, such as the Miami Open tennis tournament, the Miami Grand Prix, and the upcoming FIFA World Cup. In this context, the museum transforms into a meeting point where diverse audiences can reflect on the cultural impact of sport on contemporary society. In a city marked by global exchange and cultural diversity, the exhibition highlights how games and competitions create spaces for connection that transcend borders, traditions, and even rivalries.
Hugh Hayden. Nubian Queen, 2022. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchased with funds provided by PAMM's Collectors Council. © Hugh Hayden; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Bringing together more than one hundred works by artists from around the world, many of them from the museum's own collection, Get in the Game examines how sport has served both as a source of personal inspiration and as a vehicle for shared cultural memory. The list of participants is extensive and diverse, including names such as Virgil Abloh, Emma Amos, Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, Yinka Shonibare, and Hank Willis Thomas, among many other international artists.
The works in the exhibition address sport from multiple perspectives: as a mass spectacle, as a stage for political tensions, or as a space for identity formation. Some pieces revisit emblematic moments in sporting history, while others focus on the everyday experience of play and athletic practice.
Betsy Odom, Bulldog 30 shoulder pads 2009; courtesy of the artist; © Betsy Odom; photo: courtesy of the artist.
Among the featured works are the vibrant street basketball scenes by painter Ernie Barnes, which capture the physical and social energy of the sport in the urban space. Also screening is a film by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, a piece that follows football star Zinedine Zidane in real time during a match, transforming the sporting event into a visual and contemplative experience.
Another historical moment revisited in the exhibition is the famous tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973, known as the Battle of the Sexes . Artist Tara Mateik recreates this pivotal episode in the history of both sport and feminism, underscoring its symbolic dimension in the fight for gender equality.
Sam Fresquez, NASCAR Nation, 2022; courtesy of the artist and Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix, AZ; © Sam Fresquez; photo courtesy of the artist.
Through this collection of works, Get in the Game demonstrates how sport can also be interpreted as a cultural archive, where issues of power, identity, spectacle, and collective memory intersect. Rather than simply celebrating competition, the exhibition invites us to consider the game as fertile ground for artistic and social reflection.
Derek Fordjour. Worst to Be First, 2019. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Allison and Laurence Berg and Stephanie and Leon Vahn. © Derek Fordjour.
