Norton Museum Explores Art of Boxing

The Norton Museum of Art, organized in partnership with The Church in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, will host Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, the largest comprehensive survey of artistic representations of boxing in more than 20 years.

The exhibition features paintings, videos, sculptures and works on paper by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha and Alison Saar. It explores the global sport and its cultural impact through the lens of more than 80 artists, and it is on view from this Saturday, October 26 through Sunday, March 9, 2025.

In 2023, The Church and The FLAG Art Foundation also created unique exhibitions around the boxing theme in this three-way collaboration. 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, Roy Lichtenstein and Gary Simmons, all 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 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 artworks on view lend nuance and intimacy to boxing, and its legends.

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.

The exhibition also features drawings by famed boxer and activist Muhammad Ali, offering an insider’s perspective that most have not experienced.

Additional highlights include thought-provoking pieces like Jeffrey Gibson’s Manifest Destiny, 2016, a repurposed punching bag inspired by Native American visual culture. A Colorado-born, New York-based artist, Gibson is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is of Cherokee descent.

Photographer Harry Benson’s iconic image of Muhammad Ali with The Beatles in 1964 introduces the intersection of the sport and celebrity. The exhibition also showcases an example of Zoë Buckman’s popular series of boxing gloves adorned 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 — includes essays by North Haven 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,” Sherman said, reflecting on the sport’s global, multi-cultural presence. “Pairing art making 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.

To see more, visit norton.org.