Detail from The Liffey Swim (1923) by Jack B Yeats

The Art of Sport

By Mary Moynihan

There are many similarities between sport and art. They both provide entertainment, inspire and bring people together, and require dedication, discipline, and a strong work ethic. Both art and sport have a strong physical component. Physicality is a key part of the arts, for example in acting, dancing, movement, theatre, film, and music. Numerous artforms call on the artist to be physically fit, requiring a high level of physical flexibility, sensory awareness, muscle memory, and agility. Practice, technique, self-discovery, self-discipline, and continuous development all are key to both art and sport. Both artists and sportspeople aim to practice hard – and yet, on the day they present the artform or sport with a sense of total ease while being driven and determined, demonstrating passion and commitment to their chosen fields. We can take up sport or art as hobbies, having a fun time whenever the mood takes, us or we can dedicate our lives to either as a career or vocation.

Sport has clear and tangible results in terms of winners and losers. Sport is often (but not always) performed to win. Markers for ‘success’ are less clear in the arts, and rightly so. The arts are open to everybody to enjoy or to engage with, and art is personal. But so is sport. It’s a personal choice which sport you enjoy or don’t enjoy. But in sport the competitive element is centre stage and most sports have clearly defined rules for winning and losing. The arts are more ‘subjective’.

Whether you are involved in the arts or sports, what is important is to enjoy the process. A professional or amateur artist or sportsperson can work hard and aim for success while at the same time recognising the privilege of being involved, of having the opportunity to take part in and enjoy what they do, win or lose.

Play is a key part of both art and sport, and is fundamental to each discipline. The arts express imagination, creativity, human relationships, feelings, emotions, and more. Yet a good sportsperson has imagination, is creative, and gets emotionally involved in what they are doing, engendering emotion in the watchers on various levels. All sporting activities can be said to have their own ‘aesthetic’; some sports are artistic in nature, such as gymnastics, figure skating, or synchronised swimming, all of which are Olympic sports. There is an art to being a good footballer or tennis player. Like artists, sportspeople can demonstrate grace, skill, and presence on the field.

Art is available to sportspeople to use as a tool for wellbeing and healing. An example would be athletes using creative activities as a way to cope with the physical and mental demands of their sport. Art therapy is a useful form of activity to assist sportspeople in dealing with the stress of performance or an injury recovery journey. Sportspeople can also tell and express their stories through the arts – through theatre and film, for example – with sport frequently used as both inspiration and content for art (see below for examples).

Both sport and art are closely linked to money. People have the opportunity to practise or enjoy both sport and art without money, but money is still a key factor. I would love to see the arts receive the same levels of funding and media coverage as sport. I am not arguing for less funding or media coverage for sport in Ireland. Increased funding for all sports is necessary; there is also a need for sports funding to be more evenly distributed between various sporting activities. However, the arts are underfunded in Ireland and there is a lack of space for artists and arts organisations to work in, as well as a lack of media coverage in mainstream television and print. What is needed is increased media coverage on the work of small to medium-sized arts organisations, rather than the excessive mainstream focus on celebrity.

Both art and sport are beautiful and fascinating disciplines. Both are creative in nature, bring joy to people, and can be used to better us as people and to enrich the world. Sport and art both promote wellbeing and will continue to grow, nourish, and inform each other into the future.

Sports, Culture, and Human Rights

The culture of a particular country or community may refer to its values, beliefs, traditions, customs, and knowledge. A person’s ‘culture’ may provide them with a sense of belonging and identify. Like the arts, sport is a key component of a country’s cultural activities. Sport has become an integral part of modern society and impacts on our world in many different ways. Sport can enhance physical and mental wellbeing, provide enjoyment and entertainment, and bring people and communities together, thereby fostering social cohesion.

Sport can play a significant role in enhancing particular cultural identities through association with a particular sport, team, or club. Down through the years, certain sports can be linked to the identify of a particular country, such as baseball and American football in America, cricket in India, and Gaelic football and hurling in Ireland. However, while culture may seem ‘set’, it can also change from generation to generation, or within generations.

There are intrinsic links between sport, art, culture, and human rights. A key part of human rights is to offer equal access to participation in the cultural life of a society. Nelson Mandela said that we need to build a culture in society that is based on human rights. A culture of human rights is one where we each know and respect our own human rights as well as the human rights of others, many of which are enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Access to both the arts and sport is a human right.

When it comes to culture and sport, citizens should have fair and equal access to not only watch, but also to directly participate in, or make, sport and arts. This may require access to subsidised prices and decreased or free subscription schemes to museums, art galleries, performance venues, and to sports and leisure clubs, youth clubs, community centres, and cultural centres.

Sport is not always inclusive; it can, at times, reflect wider socioeconomic inequality and prejudice. While progress has been made in promoting equal access to sports, as well as equality within sports, there remains numerous challenges. People of all ages may face barriers to accessing sport through economic or social reasons. There may be a lack of facilities – and where facilities exist, they may not be accessible to people with additional access needs. Many people are excluded from fee-paying ‘sports’ schools that often have far superior sporting facilities compared to non-fee paying public schools, which means there is not a level playing field. This leaves those who experience economic hardship at a disadvantage when it comes to sport.

Is it ethical to pay exorbitant wages to certain figures the top echelons of sports? Inflated wages in professional sports need scrutiny, alongside the corruption and discrimination that continue to exist. Do we as people feel no shame as children die from starvation or a lack of clean drinking water, while at the same time the sports we watch end up paying millions to players simply to entertain us?

A migrant worker from Bangladesh is not fully paid for his work on the construction of football stadiums including ‘the opulent gold-clad bowl where Lionel Messi was crowned world champion’ in Qatar in 2022.[1] At the same time, Lionel Messi earns over 50 million a year and in total has likely made over a billion. Many English Premier League players earn a salary of over three million per year. Organisations such as FIFA are non-profit, which means that they are required to enter their profits back into the sporting industry – and yet they have given huge payouts to numerous people who work for the organisation.

The World Cup and Human Rights

FIFA is the international governing body of association football. The main role of FIFA is to run and organise elite competitions in world football, including the FIFA World Cup (men’s and women’s). It is estimated that FIFA made a profit of ‘over 2.3 billion dollars’[2] in 2022 because of the FIFA World Cup being held that year.

Organisations such as Amnesty International are calling for more transparency and justice when it comes to sport and human rights. To have transparency and rigorous adherence to human rights principles rather than simply making token gestures towards human rights. For example, FIFA should not award the World Cup bid to any country that fails to guarantee human rights for its own citizens, and they should end any contracts where human rights are denied or curtailed. There need to be transparent assessment processes in place for host bids, while there must be mechanisms in place to ensure human rights standards are met by hosts, as well as proper monitoring and redress systems to deal with grievances. There are also calls for trade unions, player representative groups, fan representative groups, and community-based groups to have more of a say in sporting organisations and their decisions-making processes.

Amnesty International have published a report calling for FIFA and countries bidding to host the 2030 and 2034 men’s FIFA World Cup tournaments to agree to binding commitments and legal reforms to prevent human rights violations connected to the tournament. Soccer’s governing body has already awarded the 2030 World Cup to a joint bid from Morocco, Spain and Portugal, with additional games to be played in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Currently, the only bidder for the 2034 World Cup is Saudi Arabia, with Amnesty saying there are ‘serious human rights’ risks that must be addressed there. The report, titled ‘Playing a Dangerous Game? Human Rights Risks Linked to the 2030 and 2034 FIFA World Cups’,[3] was prepared by Amnesty International, with additional research by partners from the Sports & Rights Alliance. It also highlights past abuses:

Qatar hosted the 2022 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup between November and December 2022. Qatari authorities and FIFA failed to provide compensation to migrant workers for widespread abuses, including wage theft and the unexplained deaths of workers who prepared and delivered the tournament. Migrant workers faced new forms of exploitation, highlighting the inadequacies of Qatar’s labor reforms and the shameful human rights legacy of the 2022 World Cup. Qatari laws also continue to discriminate against women due to abusive male guardianship policies and against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.[4]

According to Amnesty International, there are major questions about FIFA’s willingness to stand by the pledges and reforms it has made in recent years. Amnesty says that FIFA must ensure future bids fully safeguard human rights. The report states that the 2030 joint bid from Morocco, Portugal, and Spain carries human rights risks primarily related to ‘labour rights, discrimination, freedom of expression and assembly, policing, privacy and housing.’ It also says that Saudi Arabia’s bid carries a broad range of very serious risks. According to the report, no independent human rights organisations, political parties, or trade unions are allowed in the country, and numerous journalists, human and women’s rights defenders, political activists, and writers have been arrested with almost all human rights defenders now either on trial, serving prison terms, under travel bans, or in exile.

During the last World Cup, a small number of individual players attempted to highlight abuses, but were silenced by sporting authorities such as FIFA, as well as the host organisations. Players who said they wanted to wear armbands in support of LGTBQ+ people, or who said they would protest against the migrant worker abuses in the building of stadiums, were threatened by football authorities with punishments such as yellow cards. There was an opportunity for all players, countries, and football authorities to join together to stand up for human rights, but they failed to do so. Despite evidence of abuses taking place, the World Cup organisers allowed the games to go ahead and did very little to highlight or try to end the abuses.

Organisations such as FIFA and UEFA are acting disgracefully in not attempting to speak out against human rights abuses in a substantial way, or to stop games from taking place in countries where human rights are abused. Is it right to have games take place in a country such as Qatar, a country that denies freedom of expression, abuses migrant workers with wages theft, forced labour, and exploitation, abuses women in law and practice (with a guardianship system where women need the permission of a male guardian to marry, study abroad on government scholarships, work in government jobs, or travel abroad if under 25) and discriminates against LGBTQ+ people? Saudi Arabia is a similar country that continues to deny people basic equality and human rights.

Sporting fans, teams, and players have a definite role to play: they need to stand up and speak out, insisting that organisations such as FIFA and others do not allow games to happen in places where human rights are abused.

Discrimination Against Women in Sports

For many years, women have been discriminated against in sport, a discrimination that continues to this day. While we are seeing more and more women playing sports such as football, rugby, and basketball, for example, there is still discrimination taking place in terms of access to equal funding, facilities, and sports coverage. Furthermore, women continue to find it difficult to speak out against or stop discrimination and sexual harassment. The idea of ‘nothing about us without us’ needs to be implemented at all levels of the sporting world, both in amateur and professional sport.

The business organisation Deloitte has estimated that women’s sports will be a $1.3 billion market in 2024. The sports industry in some areas has become a large-scale profit-making business, which has led to inequality and discrimination. Commercial pressures and interests can be exploitative in sport, ranging from sports manufacturers using child labour, to the excessive wages paid in certain sports.

The gender pay gay still exists and women’s sports teams are often forced to sue for more equality. Most change happens because women themselves take action. For example, as recently as 2015, the US Women’s soccer team won the FIFA World Cup. But the players were still paid much less than the men’s team, who lost in the first knock-out round in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The players filed a wage discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the US Soccer Federation, but, as no progress had been made four years down the line, they had to sue again in 2019.[5] In Ireland in 2017, the Irish women’s professional soccer team were forced to go on strike against the Football Association of Ireland over demands for basic entitlements.

On an international level, Leela Srinivasan is CEO of Parity, a sponsorship platform dedicated to closing the gender income and opportunity gap in professional sports. In the Sports Business Journal (SBJ), she writes that the responsibility for promoting women’s equality going forward ‘largely lies with brands as well as agencies to act as catalysts for change’. Srinivasan believes that brands should diversify sponsorship away from big games to more diverse sports, and should support equality for women in games such as hockey, volleyball, and soccer. She writes:

A recent list of the 50 highest-paid athletes of all time is a stark reminder that Serena Williams remains the sole woman on that prestigious roster. The battle against complacency is our biggest adversary. Headlines may suggest that inequity is resolved, but we must remember our starting place: A mere 9% of sponsorship dollars are allocated to women’s sports.[6]

According to an article in The Guardian by Tom Garry, a new survey has shown that ‘the number of women experiencing discrimination in the football industry is continuing to rise.’[7]  Conducted by the group Women in Football, the survey found that, in England, 89% of women working in the game have experienced discrimination in the workplace – ‘up from 82% in 2023 and 66% four years ago’.[8] An important finding was that there is a key problem around taking action to address incidents of discrimination that are reported. According to the survey,  when women reported incidents of  discrimination at work, ‘over 60% say no action was taken, while 16% of those people felt they were not even listened to when they made their complaint.’[9]

The issue of trans rights also impacts on sport. As Guardian writer Sean Ingle wrote in his article ‘Decision Time: Why Sport is Struggling to Deal with Transgender Row’: ‘For many years most have regarded the issues as too dangerous to touch: the sporting equivalent of playing pass the parcel with a live grenade. Now, though, they have no choice. The emergence of elite rans women such as the weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the swimmer Lia Thomas and the cyclist Emily Bridge has seen to that.’

The Art of Equality: A Sporting Chance

The sports industry can do more in an open and transparent manner to promote  equality and inclusion. Actions to make sport more human rights-oriented include putting proper procedures in place to take immediate action when incidents of racism, gender discrimination, inequality, and a lack of access are reported; 40-50% representation of women on all boards and committees; sports funding to be equally distributed between men and women; and ensuring that 30% of funding is put in place to provide access on the basis of equality. Working for the rights and inclusion of trans people can be done alongside the continued battle for the inclusion of women in sport. Sport can be accessible, affordable, and inclusive, with a focus on community engagement, education and training in management, leadership, and coaching.

The popularity of sport means that athletes and sporting organisations have the ability to influence society and promote positive change by advocating for social causes that can range from racism, civil rights, and gender equality to environmentalism. On an individual level, sport can promote values such as competitiveness and perseverance. It can also promote group values such as teamwork and comradery. Sport has at times been used to highlight injustices in society and can play a role in taking political action to bring about change.

During the era of apartheid in South Africa, many countries and sporting organisations took part in international boycotts to show their opposition to the racial discrimination and segregation that was taking place. South Africa was banned from competing in the Olympic Games from 1964 to 1988 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).[10] Some athletes have used their platform to speak out for social change and racial and social justice, and art can be a powerful tool in these efforts. In the 2024 French elections, the French soccer captain Kylian Mbappé urged French voters to come out against the extreme Far Right, urging French people to go out and vote.

Gender bias continues to exist  in sport and in the constitution of sporting organisations. Female athletes and leaders are making an impact, are more visible, and are creating brilliant performances both on and off the fields of sport. But marginalisation, sexualisation, and everyday sexism in sport still continues. Many of the changes made in sport are largely the result of efforts by women themselves. What is required is more women from diverse backgrounds in leadership and decision-making roles. Issues continue, ranging from body-shaming and the mandatory wearing of ‘objectified’ sporting outfits created by and for a ‘male gaze’ – ones that are totally unsuitable for periods, for example – to lower wages and funding, to less media coverage, marketing and sponsorship.

Only when structures such as the IOC (International Olympics Committee) or major sporting organisations have 50:50 equal representation on their board and committees, and indeed all sporting clubs commit to doing so, will we start to see real change. Women themselves are to the fore in building equality in sport in terms of participation and viewing, however, much more needs to be done to ensure proper equality and to move beyond the current sexism,  discrimination, and inequality that continues to exist. 

A key success story in sport is the Paralympic Games which, according to the Council of Europe, are ‘an athletic competition for people with disabilities, including amputees, people with impaired vision, paraplegics and people with cerebral palsy.’ The Paralympic Games originated in 1948 and since 1952 have been staged in Olympic years. The Winter Paralympics were first held in 1976. The first true parallel with the Olympic Games took place in 1988 in Seoul, South Korea, where the athletes had a Paralympic Village and used Olympic sites for competitions. Today, the Paralympic games continue to challenge discrimination regarding disability and act as a catalyst for change and inclusion.

Sport in Art

Aiming to bring the arts and sport together has the potential to expand audiences for both areas, and could lead to positive outcomes in terms of community engagement. Music is often played at sports events, and there are numerous examples of what is often referred to as sport art. From the horse-racing paintings of Edgar Degas or Edouard Manet to Andy Warhol’s portraits of Muhammad Ali (1978), to the Martin Scorsese-directed Raging Bull (1980), or the Steven Spielberg-directed Munich (2005), artists have long made use of sporting figures and activities to create new work.

A mesmerising and provocative work of art is the documentary sports film Olympia (1939), written, directed, and produced by the renowned German film director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl (1939). This is a groundbreaking yet controversial film about the 1936 summer Olympics run by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. ‘Starting among the ruins of ancient Olympia, Riefenstahl’s sensuous camera draws potent parallels between classical Greece and the ideals of physical perfection promoted by Nazism and fascism in 1930s Europe. Beauty has never been as nauseating.’[11]

In Buenos Aires, the Argentinian footballer Diego Maradona (1960-2020) along with Argentinian Lionel Messi ( born 1987) and other players are depicted in a mural re-creation of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. In the original fresco by Michelangelo in the Sistine chapel in Rome, the fingers of God and Adam are almost touching, with the gesture representing the creation of the first human as a result of contact with God. In the ceiling mural recreation by artist Santiago Barbeito (which is on display on the ceiling of an indoor football pitch), Maradona is portrayed as God giving life to Messi as Adam, while they are surrounded by other footballers.

An  extraordinary Irish artwork relating to sport is Seán Keating’s The Tipperary Hurler, which can be seen in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. Keating was an artist, art teacher, and broadcaster. He finished The Tipperary Hurler in 1928 ‘for exhibition at the Amsterdam Olympics’[12] in that same year. The hurler in the painting is supposedly based on the celebrated Tipperary hurler John Joe Hayes who may have played in the 1925 All-Ireland Final.[13] The jersey worn by the hurler in the painting, however, is from the Commercials hurling club, initially set up by players living in inner city Dublin. Current artists may go on to create new work inspired by the recent gripping All-Ireland Hurling Final in Croke Park on Sunday 21 July last, with the players from Cork and Clare brilliantly described as ‘two teams of Roy Keane but they all have a large weapon in their hands.’[14]

In 2011, British artist Fiona Banner, also known as The Vanity Press, created Superhuman Nude, a work of art subverting ‘expectations of sporting art by using words instead of images to portray a runner at speed.’ According to The Arts Council of England collection, Banner creates nude studies from life, transcribing physical scenarios into verbal descriptions, creating ‘wordscapes’ that define the shape and form of the body as well as physical mannerisms. Banner’s work is a print and a nude study of a Paralympic athlete focusing on superhuman strength as well as the frailty of the human body. Described by the Guardian as ‘By far the most powerful and thought-provoking artwork to come out of the London Olympics, this is a meditation on what it means to watch athletics, as Banner translates her stream of thoughts into a prose poem with the force of sculpture.’[15] 

Olympic Arts

The arts once featured as competitions in the Olympics. For over four decades, the Olympics awarded official medals in art categories covering sculpture, architecture, literature, and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions. From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavours.’[16] The entries had to be original artworks inspired by concepts of sport, having not been previously published, exhibited, or performed elsewhere. Each category had sub-categories, with literature including drama while painting included paintings, drawings, and graphic arts. 

One of the original founders of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, saw the arts as ‘integral to his vision of the Olympics’, and he considered a ‘true Olympian’ to be ‘someone who was not only athletic but skilled in music and literature’, with a combination of ‘muscle and mind’.[17] This goes back to the original Olympic Games in Ancient Greece where sports and art went hand in and hand and were equally on display. 

In Ireland, the painter Jack B Yeats was the first person to win an Olympic medal for Ireland as an independent nation in the Paris 1924 games. He won silver for his work The Liffey Swim, which shows an annual sporting event that takes place to this day. The painting can be seen in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. The Irish landscape artist Letitia Marion Hamilton (1878-1964), who studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, won an Olympic bronze medal for an Irish landscape at the London Olympics in 1948. Her work can be seen in numerous galleries including the Hugh Lane Gallery, Crawford Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Ireland, although the whereabouts of the artwork that won the bronze Olympic medal, Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races, is unknown.

One of the winners in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics was French artist Paul Landowski who ‘won Olympic gold for a sculpture of a boxer. He is now best known for his work on the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.’[18] 

Juried art competitions continued as a feature of the Olympics until 1949 when the ‘IOC congress concluded that since almost all contestants in the art competitions were professionals, it didn’t reflect the amateur status of the Olympics. The IOC attempted to revive art competitions at Helsinki in 1952, but the idea was rejected by the hosts. In 1954, the competitions were once and for all replaced by art exhibitions.’[19]

Today the games feature an Olympic cultural programme where contemporary artists display work in public spaces. Artists are commissioned to create original artworks inspired by sporting themes and Olympic values, and the works are presented in publicly accessible spaces in cities housing the Olympic games. There is an Olympic museum located in Lausanne, Switzerland that shows international exhibitions and programmes linked to the stories, art, history, and culture of the Olympic Games. Since 2018, the museum runs the Olympian Artist Programme which provides Olympic and Paralympic athletes with the opportunity to apply, to create, and present new works of art, as well as to contribute to Olympic-inspired programmes run by the museum, ‘promoting sport, creativity and Olympic values in society.’

We may start a new campaign to bring back Olympic medals for the arts for the 2028 games. In addition, rather than the Olympics commissioning well-known artists, there should be an open public call for artists to apply with an open and transparent judging process. This is a fairer and more equal approach to creating and presenting art.

In my research, both on past and contemporary artists, the majority of artworks related to sport that I came across were by men. The work by men is excellent and deserves recognition and media coverage. In my experience, although artworks by women seem to be invisible, it does not mean that they do not exist. Quite often there is an ‘invisibility blanket’ that continues to exist across the work, actions, and voices of women. Women are making art about sport – but the work remains comparatively invisible in comparison to the work of male artists, another area that needs to be re-balanced.

Sport and art are different and each discipline has its own distinct methods and style. Yet, they share many similarities. Sport, like the arts, has the ability to not just entertain but to bring people together, and to inspire people to engage in physical activity, as well as in activities that promote and inspire self-esteem and social inclusion. Both sport and art are forms of self-expression, engaging the emotions of those taking part and watching. Both require self-discipline and creativity, and both have the ability to, on the one hand, promote a sense of national identity and, on the other, bring people together across borders. The arts have a strong storytelling and aesthetic component, but there is also an aesthetic to sport. While sport may not be ‘art’, nonetheless it does have ‘a special and distinctive aesthetic role, providing an experience for the viewer that cannot be found elsewhere.’[20]

Mary Moynihan, MA, she/her, is an award-winning author of novels, poetry, films, and plays, and a creator of art and photography. She is Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and Artistic Curator for the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/samindrakunti/2024/05/16/fifa-has-yet-to-release-qatar-world-cup-human-rights-report/

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268874/fifa-net-income/

[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act30/8071/2024/en/

[4] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act30/8071/2024/en/

[5] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gender-equality-sport-big-idea-shape-2024-gervais-cmrs-frsa-mylqe/

[6] https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/02/05/opinion-srinivasan

[7] Data shows 89% of women in football industry experience discrimination by Tom Garry, The Guardian, 19 June 2024

[8] Data shows 89% of women in football industry experience discrimination by Tom Garry, The Guardian, 19 June 2024

[9] Data shows 89% of women in football industry experience discrimination by Tom Garry, The Guardian, 19 June 2024

[10] https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/culture-and-sport

[11] It’s the Art Olympics! The 20 Greatest Ever Sporting Artworks by Jonathan Jones.

[12] Keating Portrait truly a picture that paints a thousand words by Paul Rouse https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/othersport/arid-20473404.html

[13] Keating Portrait truly a picture that paints a thousand words by Paul Rouse https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/othersport/arid-20473404.html

[14] Nial McIntyre, Irish Independence, 21 July 2024

[15] It’s the Art Olympics! The 20 Greatest Ever Sporting Artworks by Jonathan Jones.

[16] When the Olympics gave out medals for arts by Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian Magazine

[17] When the Olympics gave out medals for arts by Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian Magazine

[18] Look to the Past: When Olympic Medals were awarded for architecture, music and literature by Indira Shestakova, Smithsonian Magazine

[19] Look to the Past: When Olympic Medals were awarded for architecture, music and literature by Indira Shestakova, Smithsonian Magazine

[20] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17430437.2018.1431593