Exhibition Dates:
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July 2–October 21, 2018 |
Exhibition Location:
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The Met Fifth Avenue, Mezzanine, The Henry R. Luce Center
for the Study of American Art, Gallery 773 |
Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–1963), an electrician from upstate New York, donated more than 300,000 examples of printed ephemera to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Included in his collection is one of the largest holdings of vintage boxing cards in any public institution. Opening July 2 at The Met, On the Ropes: Vintage Boxing Cards from the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection will feature some 270 cards of the most celebrated boxers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including John L. Sullivan, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Rocky Marciano, among others. The exhibition will also explore the ways in which images of boxing foregrounded issues related to nationality, race, ethnicity, celebrity, and notions of masculinity.
Boxing—a combat sport with ancient origins—was the subject of caricatures, political cartoons, and scientific experiments in the 19th and 20th centuries. To illustrate the breadth of interest in the sport during this period, the boxing cards will be shown along with more than two dozen works in other media. A diverse roster of artists will be represented, including George Bellows, Richmond Barthé, Lola Cueto, John Hoppner, Eadweard Muybridge, August Sander, and James Van Der Zee.
Originally inserted into cigarette packs beginning in the 1880s, boxing cards gained in popularity around 1910, mirroring the sport’s emergence as a widespread form of entertainment in the United States. In the 1940s and 1950s, chewing gum companies became the top producers of the collectibles.
The exhibition is organized by Allison Rudnick, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints.
On July 13, as part of the Met Fridays—Conversations With… series, Allison Rudnick and Doug Fischer, editor-in-chief of The Ring magazine, will discuss the history of boxing, stars of the sport, and famous matches represented in 19th- and 20th-century boxing cards from the Burdick Collection.
This event is part of MetFridays: New York's Night Out.
MetFridays programs are made possible in part by Bonnie J. Sacerdote.
The exhibition will be featured on The Met’s website, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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June 8, 2018
Image: W.S. Kimball & Co. John L. Sullivan, Champion Heavy Weight Pugilist of the World, from the Champions of Games and Sports series (N184, Type 1) issued by W.S. Kimball & Co.,1887. Commercial color lithograph. 2 11/16 × 1 1/2 in. (6.8 × 3.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (63.350.216.184.7)
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