Pharrell’s Call to Include the Arts in the Olympics Highlights a Lost Tradition

In light of the 2024 Paris Olympics buzz, musician and designer Pharrell Williams recently called for reviving the arts competition at the games.

Williams announced his wishes to reinstate the arts competitions for the 2028 edition at his star-studded Louis Vuitton event on Thursday, the night before this year’s opening ceremony, in the city of lights. While this revelation may seem out of left field, some in living memory may recall the inclusion of arts in the modern adaptation of the Olympics from 1912 to 1948.

The Olympics started as an ancient religious and athletic tradition among the Greeks in honor of the god Zeus. The ancient games, on which the present-day event is modeled, boasted athletic competitions such as running and discus throwing, and ended with the slaughter of 100 oxen. They took place every four years from 776 BCE through 393 CE, when they were banned by the Roman emperor Theodosius I as a pagan festival.

The Olympics were later revived by the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who was inspired by the ancient version, with the first modern edition taking place in Athens in 1896. Though Coubertin saw the arts as essential to his vision, he could not convince local organizers for the first few iterations.

Not long after, however, beginning at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, the modern games came to include the arts. Medals were awarded across five art categories, including architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. Between 1912 and 1948 juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts that drew inspiration from the sports.

That last caveat—requiring the arts competitors to submit works intertwined with sport—limited the consistency and scope of the fine arts competitions, as the Olympics expanded its overall reach to become a premiere international event. The arts competitions were finally cancelled in 1948 and, four years later, a request to bring them back was denied. Those 151 medals that had been awarded were officially stricken from the Olympic record and do not count currently factor into countries’ medal counts.

Though Williams did not expand on how he or others might conceive of an arts competition within the Olympics, it’s clear that reviving them would not only take a big effort but would also require the support of those active among the categories in each respective the field.

As recent studies on arts workers reveal gaps in professional continuation and low wages, support for those in the field could be a welcome change and an opportunity for impactful discovery.