Historically, sports teams and art museums have not seen much overlap in their commercial activities. But museums are increasingly featuring exhibits about the intersection of art and sports, as a means of enticing new audiences to visit and getting them to think about art in a new way. Among recent examples, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, hosted “Sport and Spectator” from March through July 2025, while SF MOMA in San Francisco highlighted “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, and Culture” from October 2024 through February 2025; that exhibit then traveled to two other museums. While not a brand-new technique — similarly themed exhibits have taken place occasionally over the years — the frequency is on the rise of late.
Something that is new: Art museums and sports clubs pairing for merchandise, usually for jerseys that are worn on the field and sold to fans. Most such collaborations are local in scope, involving teams and art institutions that are located in the same city or region (and sometimes a local artist as well) and featuring locally meaningful imagery:
- This month, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minnesota Aurora, the community-owned women’s soccer team that plays in the United Soccer League, released the 2026 Aurora FC home kit, a collaboration between the two entities along with local artist Lindsay Nohl. The jersey, dubbed “Flora,” features Minnesota-native wildflowers, including lupine, coneflower, wild rice, and showy lady’s slippers (the state flower) in a deep blue-on-blue design reminiscent of the night sky. Merchandise sales bring in about a third of the Aurora’s revenues, and 15% of consumer sales from the collection are being donated to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.
- Last summer, the NBA’s Chicago Bulls launched a retail collection with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and local artist Cody Hudson, who previously designed a hat for the Bulls and has exhibited at MCA Chicago. The collection included an all-over print hoodie, an art logo crewneck sweatshirt, a snapback hat, an art poster, and a sticker packet. The designs were inspired by Hudson’s reimagining of the Bulls logo in his cut-paper style.
- Wednesfield Football Club, based in a village that is part of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands of England, partnered in summer 2025 with Black Country Living Museum, based in the West Midlands town of Dudley. The latter became the team’s shirt sponsor, with its name featured prominently on the jersey. The two partners got together through an ex-Wednesfield player who serves on the board of the BCLM. Note that this deal is different from the others since it is a sponsorship rather than a collaborative collection per se, and because the museum focuses on the history of the local area rather than on art.
- The Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA worked with the Cleveland Museum of Art on their 2024-2025 Nike City Edition uniform. The jersey was in the sky-blue of the museum’s branding and featured the city’s nickname “The Land” in white. Both the jersey and shorts had side panels in a coloring book–style pattern featuring Cleveland and Cavaliers motifs, which fans could color in to create their own unique version. The uniforms were worn in six Cavaliers games during the season. The NBA and Nike’s City Edition program sees NBA teams create their own alternate jerseys incorporating locally relevant iconography.
Collaborations between museums and sports teams raise awareness and fan engagement for both parties, as well as presenting opportunities for creative product development and collectibility. But many museums remain selective about such partnerships. The MIA told the Minnesota Star Tribune that it had already received inquiries from other Twin Cities sports teams, but said that it would need a closely aligned mission or other strong reason to enter into similar ventures in the future.
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