Play Digest: Full Court Press

It’s that special time of year when hockey, basketball, major league soccer, football (and even the tail end of baseball’s post-season) merge. This week’s link pack is all about art and sports.

The Museum of Modern Art’s new exhibition about fashion, Items: Is Fashion Modern?includes the shirt Pelé wore during the 1958 World Cup and Colin Kaepernick’s #7 jersey from his years as a 49er. 

Project Backboard finds disused basketball courts around the country and transforms the playing surfaces into playable large-scale artworks. Maria Molteni‘s similar project in Boston.

 

Graphic designers Ill-Studio and fashion brand Pigalle collaborate on a colorful basketball court in Paris.

Will wonders never cease? Books on basketball in the library stacks at the Met? (Yes, that Met.)

The Beautiful Game has inspired a lot of art, some of it quotidian, some of it sublime, some, well, you be the judge. Other artistic soccer enthusiasts include Paul Pfeiffer, whose video sculptures often examine culture’s fascination with sports celebrity;  photographer Jessica Hilltout, who looks at the role of football in African nations through its “open-air temples” to the sport; and Austrian painter Georg Eisler, who captured the horror of the Hillsborough tragedy.

Check in next week for a new roundup of the latest play news and stories.

(Image credit: William La Chance’s art adorns a basketball court in Kinloch, Missouri. Photo by Daniel Peterson.)

 

About Eugenia Bell

Eugenia Bell is the guest editor for playtime.pem.org. She is the former executive editor of Design Observer and Design Editor of Frieze. Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Artforum, Bookforum, and Garage, among other places.

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