On the Ropes: Vintage Boxing Cards from the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection
At The Met Fifth Avenue
July 2–October 21, 2018
Boxing, a combat sport with ancient origins, was wildly popular in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This exhibition features vintage boxing cards from the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection of printed ephemera that date from the 1880s to the 1950s, exploring the ways in which images of boxing foreground issues of nationality, race, ethnicity, celebrity, and notions of masculinity in the United States during the period.
Works in other media included in the exhibition, such as John Hoppner's painting Richard Humphreys, the Boxer, attest to the ubiquity of boxing imagery in the visual culture of eighteenth-century England. The later emergence of the sport as a source of both entertainment and inquiry across the globe is reflected in diverse works by Richmond Barthé, George Bellows, Lola Cueto, Eadweard Muybridge, and August Sander.
". . . the sleeper hit of the summer." —Hyperallergic
In this Now at The Met article, exhibition curator Allison Rudnick provides readers with an overview of the themes of this exhibition—the first to showcase Jefferson Burdick's boxing cards, which feature some of the most celebrated boxers of the last two centuries.
A curatorial intern discusses cards on view in this exhibition related to the "Fight of the Century"—an inflammatory boxing match held in 1910 between Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson that stoked racial tensions across the United States.
Learn more about the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection: the more than 303,000 advertising inserts, postcards, and posters that constitute a primary part of The Met's collection of ephemera, and help tell the history of popular printmaking in the United States.
Signature image: John L. Sullivan, Champion Heavy Weight Pugilist of the World (detail), from the Champions of Games and Sports series (N184, Type 1), issued by W.S. Kimball & Co., 1887. Commercial color lithograph, sheet: 2 11/16 x 1 1/2 in. (6.8 x 3.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (63.350.216.184.7). Related Content images: Joe Jeannette, Boxing (detail), from Mecca & Hassan Champion Athlete and Prize Fighter collection, issued by Mecca Cigarettes, 1910. Commercial color lithograph, sheet: 2 1/2 x 2 7/8 in. (6.4 x 7.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (63.350.247.218.85). James J. Jeffries, Boxing (detail), from Mecca & Hassan Champion Athlete and Prize Fighter collection, 1910. Commercial color lithograph, sheet: 2 1/2 x 2 7/8 in. (6.4 x 7.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (63.350.247.218.86). Right: Jack Johnson, Boxing (detail), from Mecca & Hassan Champion Athlete and Prize Fighter collection, 1910. Commercial color lithograph, sheet: 2 1/2 x 2 7/8 in. (6.4 x 7.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (63.350.247.218.87)
