July 11, 2018

As soccer’s FIFA World Cup winds up this weekend in Russia, Florida’s Pérez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM) is featuring an exhibition on the art of soccer, or, as it is called in many places, football (fútbol in Spanish). “The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art,” which runs through Sept. 2, 2018, features works by more than 40 artists who have revealed their love and unique views of the sport through painting, photography, sculpture, and video art. The PAMM exhibition, timed to coincide with the World Cup, is free to youth soccer clubs and teams in the Miami area.

“The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art” at the Pérez Art Museum of Miami celebrates the art of soccer. Credit: © Oriol Tarridas, Pérez Art Museum Miami

“The World’s Game” features works by such famous artists as Andy Warhol and Kehinde Wiley, and includes soccer balls (naturally), cleats, player portraits, videos of raucous fans, and miniature figurines dashing about on artistically imagined pitches (playing fields). Warhol and Wiley excepted (they are both connected to New York City), most artists in the exhibition come from the Miami area and nearby regions of Latin America. The exhibition is a celebration of the sport, of course, but it also explores how soccer influences nationalism while also promoting globalism through such uniting events as the World Cup.

“The World’s Game” also reflects Miami’s diverse population through the international appeal of the sport. Over two-thirds of Miami’s population is of Hispanic origin. Cubans make up about half of that group, and they give the city a strong Latin culture. The city also has a large Haitian population. Other population groups include those of German, Irish, and Italian descent. About a fifth of the people in Miami are African Americans.

PAMM focuses on international art of the 1900′s and 2000′s. It is one of the main attractions of Miami’s Museum Park (formerly known as Bicentennial Park) on Biscayne Bay. The museum’s roots go back to the opening of the city’s Center for the Fine Arts in 1984. It was renamed the Miami Art Museum in 1994, and was later renamed again in honor of Miami real estate mogul, art collector, and philanthropist Jorge M. Pérez, whose donations helped fund an expansion and a new building that opened in 2013. The three-story, 200,000-square-foot (18,580-square-meter) museum was designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron.