With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino & Tommie Smith

A half century before NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee, gold medal sprinter Tommie Smith raised a fist at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico to protest abuse of human rights around the world and in response to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. His historic gesture, and its reverberations over the past 50 years, will be explored in this important exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art.

The exhibition is the culmination of a multiyear collaboration between Smith and Los Angeles–based conceptual artist Glenn Kaino and will feature sculptural installations and other works by Kaino, objects from the Tommie Smith archives and an animation of Smith’s winning race created from contributed drawings. By bridging the past and present, With Drawn Arms will resonate powerfully in the current moment of reckoning with racial injustice in America.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website