Arts of Life is pleased to announce our next exhibition Hail Mary, guest curated by Margaret Crowley and Tim Callahan.

Hail Mary is an exhibition about sport. It examines the complexity and inherent spirituality of participating, watching and being a fan of any sport.

James Naismith’s Guiding Principles of Basket-Ball, 1891

(Glossed by Dave Hickey)

1)  There must be a ball; it should be large.

(This in prescient expectation of Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving, whose hands would reinvent basketball as profoundly as Jimi Hendrix’s hands reinvented rock-and-roll.)

2) There shall be no running with the ball. 

(Thus mitigating the privileges of owning portable property. Extended ownership of the ball is a virtue in football. Possession of the ball in basketball is never ownership; it is always temporary and contingent upon your doing something with it.)

3) No man on either team shall be restricted from getting the ball at any time that it is in play.

(Thus eliminating the job specialization that exists in football, by whose rules only those players in “skill positions” may touch the ball. The rest just help. In basketball there are skills peculiar to each position, but everyone must run, jump, catch, shoot, pass, and defend.)

4) Both teams are to occupy the same area, yet there is to be no personal contact.

(Thus no rigorous territoriality, nor any rewards for violently invading your opponents’ territory unless you score. The model for football is the drama of adjacent nations at war. The model for basketball is the polyglot choreography of urban sidewalks.)

5) The goal shall be horizontal and elevated.

(The most Jeffersonian principle of all: Labor must be matched by aspiration. To score, you must work your way down court, but you must also elevate! Ad astra.)

Margaret Crowley (b. Ottawa, IL) is an artist living and working in Chicago. Crowley founded Produce Model Gallery in 2016.

Timothy Callahan (b. Chicago, IL) co-organized Produce Model Gallery with Crowley from 2020 to 2024.