Martina Navratilova, by Cecile Johnson, 1985, acrylic, 26” x 36”

Sport and Art–The Women’s View, an exhibit of the work in the National Art Museum of Sport’s (NAMS) permanent collection by women artists, will run through Dec. 15 on the IUPUI campus in Indianapolis. Fifty-seven paintings, sculptures, prints and a giant book of marine photography–all by women–are exhibited at the museum, located at University Place.

From its earliest days, the NAMS, founded in New York City in 1959, had the involvement of women as both artists and supporters. One of the first women to be identified as a sports artist was Fay Moore, who has painted sports as varied as lacrosse and squash in forms equally diverse–medals to murals. She has found a special niche in equine art inspired by the power of the horses and the color of the silks on a trip to Saratoga, N.Y. Usually, Moore uses a mix of media and a style she calls neo-pointillism. Another woman associated with sport art in the early days of NAMS was Rhoda Sherbell, whose sculpture of legendary baseball manager Casey Stengel was in the museum’s first exhibit at its first home, a gallery in Madison Square Garden. Stengel’s likeness in bronze is now a feature of the courtyard at University Place. Her head and shoulders bronze of another baseball legend, Yogi Berra, is one of the museum’s newest acquisitions. The exhibit also includes prints by four Inuit women whose work is in the museum’s 90-piece collection of prints, sculptures and artifacts depicting games played by the people of northern Canada and Alaska.

The National Art Museum of Sport, the nation’s largest collection of sport-related fine art, is open to the public free of charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. week days. For group tours and weekend hours, call 317-274-3627.