Hampton Art Lovers Presents: In the Paint

Black athletic movement, performance and cultural visibility are explored through works centered on artist and former professional football player Ernie Barnes. In the Paint: Ernie Barnes and the Art of the Game is presented by Hampton Art Lovers at the Historic Ward Rooming House in Overtown as a companion exhibition to Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture at Pérez Art Museum Miami. The exhibition is offered on select dates from June 13 through October, with one-hour viewing sessions available from noon to 5 p.m.

Drawn from The Norwood Collection, the exhibition focuses on Barnes’s rhythmic depictions of athletes, performers and everyday community life. His elongated figures and dynamic compositions connect the physical intensity of sport with the improvisational structure of jazz, capturing motion, anticipation, collision and release through a distinctly expressive visual language.

The exhibition also places Barnes within a broader history of Black performance and public visibility. Archival materials related to Paul Robeson introduce themes of athletic achievement, cultural influence and political consequence, while works by Alonzo Adams, Herb Scharfman, Romare Bearden, Barrington Watson and Basil Watson expand the conversation across neighborhood play, boxing, basketball, Olympic spectacle and global athletic iconography.

Presented in Overtown, a neighborhood long associated with Black music, migration, performance and cultural production, the exhibition frames sport as more than competition. Through painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and archival material, In the Paint considers athletics as choreography, ritual, improvisation and a vehicle for memory, identity and aspiration.