Hot Coffee with writer Seph Rodney on the show “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture,” he just co-curated at SFMOMA

Seph Rodney, PhD, a New York-based writer is known for his precise and, yet multilayered art criticism published in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and other major platforms. Recently he also turned his attention to curating and elucidating the meaning of art objects and corresponding artistic visions through positioning them in space. “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture” an exhibition Rodney co-curated with Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, SFMOMA’s Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design and Katy Siegel, SFMOMA’s Research Director, Special Program Initiatives, opened in San Francisco on October 19 and will be on view through February 18,2025. I asked Seph several questions about this exhibition, about his interest in curation and also how he chooses exhibitions he writes about.

Nina: Imagine you are in your favorite coffee or tea spot. Where is it? What are you drinking? What are the three things you see right now?

Seph: Well, having moved to Newburgh a little over four years ago, my favorite spots for daytime drinks are now generally within walking distance, on or close to Liberty Street, where I live. There is Betty’s Snack Bar, which has a range of teas, which is great for me since I very rarely drink coffee anymore. Peppermint is my preferred flavor. Sitting in Betty’s place, depending on the direction I’m oriented I can see George Washington’s old headquarters, the manicured public garden that now surrounds it, and can glimpse the Hudson River.

Installation view of *Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture* at SFMOMA.October 19, 2024−February 18, 2025. Photo courtesy of SFMOMA and the artists. Photography by Matthew Millman.

Nina: Please tell me more about "Get in the Game," the show you are co-curating at SFMOMA in San Francisco. What prompted this exhibition and how do the works you will be presenting fit your curatorial practice?

Seph: It just opened on October 19th, so my curation work is essentially done. I think what prompted the exhibition, for the most part, is the desire of the new director, Christopher Bedford, who is a former athlete, to shift the museum’s orientation toward audiences that are genuinely interested in other areas of culture, such as fashion, design and sports, yet rarely enter the museum. The ability of the art museum to reach the general public is a perennial problem and one that thoughtful curators and directors and writers have been creating innovative responses to in the last several years. Chris at one point said to me (perhaps while in the company of my co-curators Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and Katy Siegel) that he thought it a shame that people would walk right past the museum to go down the road to a Golden State Warriors game and completely ignore the institution. The entire curatorial team genuinely believes we can reach those people, through visual which often utilizes the same or similar languages used by fashion, design, and sports while also conveying more complex and layered meanings.

I was invited to work on the show perhaps because Chris and I struck up a rapport years ago when I was working for Hyperallergic and writing about an exhibition at Baltimore Museum of Art, where Chris was the then director. We allowed ourselves to be fan boys for a moment talking about artists we loved and the ones who happened to be athletes earlier in their lives or made work that addressed athletic competition. It helps that Chris is a former football player and that I was a fencer for many years. In addition to getting along well, I believe that Chris understood that I have a good deal of knowledge about athletic competition and a genuine enthusiasm for it. More, he has rather consistently read my criticism over the past few years, and I think he and Katy and Jennifer appreciate my ability to think deeply about art while making this thinking accessible to general readers.

I don’t think I would make so bold as to call my curatorial work a “practice.” I have co-curated about three major shows (one at Crystal Bridges on the invitation of Glenn Adamson) and have been the sole curator of three shows, one of which was the Pratt Alumni show of 2023. I have a few different ideas about how to use visual art to explore meaning. Curating allows me to make those explorations with objects instead of my typical medium which is words.

Nina: Could you pick one work that is currently on view and zero in on it? What is it called? How do you think it fits the premise of drama, heartbreak, joy, and everything in-between that goes into sports theatrics and community-building?

Seph: Two related works I spent a lot of time with when I was there during opening week were Savanah Leaf’s videos (originally shot as film): “run” (2023) and “run 002” from 2024. They depict the artist who is a former Olympian in the sport of volleyball, being physically measured and prodded and poked and tested while she placidly submits to the examinations. The second “run” (featuring Willem Dafoe) shows medical technicians doing the same thing to a toddler who looks very much like Leaf. The child cries and slumps in fear as they are manipulated and evaluated. To see how antiseptic and in some ways inhumane the back-of-house realities are for athletes who are constantly controlled — told what to eat, when to eat, when to sleep, how and when to train, etc. — compels me to empathize with them. The use of the child makes the watching even more of a moving experience There is drama here, clearly. There is also a sober and clear-eyed assessment of some the costs to athletes who compete in very rarefied echelons of organized sports.

Nina: You are an active art writer who also curates - how do these two practices influence each other? And lastly, how do you choose exhibitions you write about?

Seph: Again, I would not say that I have a curatorial “practice.” At this stage of my experience that would seem rather pretentious. But ultimately, I do care about ideas and about the viewer’s experience of visual art, and want to create compelling moments of encounter where it becomes possible to actually think differently, to be impressed upon in some ineffable way. As a writer and critic, I suppose I want a similar thing: to be insightful, to give the reader something like an epiphany, something that breaks through the heavy-handed lecturing and vapid cheerleading that art writing can indulge in. I write to surprise myself and to figure things out and perhaps, saying this in another way, this what I want from shows I’ve curated.

As far as my method for choosing exhibitions to write about, that has to do with perhaps primarily, my genuine interest in a show and a feeling that I have something worthwhile to say about it. Some shows leave me with little to say — which has nothing necessarily to do with whether or not I like the work. Other considerations include whether the artists has been laboring in obscurity for a while and deserves some attention, whether they are people of color or women who have been historically underserved and thus deserve a bit more light shed on them (though this does not mean writing hagiographies). There are also the very practical issues, such as whether the publication is interested in getting a piece from me regarding that particular exhibition, whether I got the pitch to them in time for them to edit it and get it published, whether I have the bandwidth. Sometimes I’m working on other projects and just don’t have the wherewithal to do the work required to write a good piece. Through doing this for some time I have come to respect the fact that I am a finite being and I need to care for myself or none of the work I need and want to do will happen. Also, I try to play the long game, remembering that an opportunity to recognize an artist or evaluate a collection might come around again, years from now.

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