The Norton Museum of Art recently hosted a VIP reception for invited guests to celebrate the opening of the first new exhibition of the season, Strike Fast, Dance Lightly.
Nearly 150 invited guests attended a VIP reception to preview the boxing-themed exhibition, which features 125 paintings, drawings, sculptures, video installations, photographs, and other works by nearly 90 artists from around the world.
Actor Jovon Jacobs gave a dramatic presentation of “The Boxer, Part I,” written by poet Gabriele Tinti, from which the exhibition draws its title. Ghislain d’Humières, the Norton’s Kenneth C. Griffin Director and CEO, and Arden Sherman, the Museum’s Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, offered remarks.
Participating artists, including Jared McGriff, Cheryl Pope, Lonnie Holley, Rose Marie Cromwell, and Marcel Hüppauff were in attendance.
Guests enjoyed wine and cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres before venturing into the galleries for a tour led by Sherman.
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing is 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.
The Norton’s exhibition is a collaboration with two New York arts organizations, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, and The Church, Sag Harbor, 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, all of whom have never showcased work at the Norton prior to Strike Fast, Dance Lightly.
Featuring 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.
Image credit: Capehart Photography
