Gym Time

January 7 – February 27, 2026

Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Curated by Natalie Fleming and Van Tran Nguyen

Gym Time is an exhibition and performance connecting the Davis Center, current home of Georgetown’s Department of Performing Arts, to its origins as the university’s first gymnasium, Ryan Gym, one hundred years earlier. Through the juxtaposition of historical photographs and documents from Georgetown's Booth Family Center for Special Collections, more recent photographs from Davis Center's archives and a new performance written and directed by multimedia artist Tara Mateik, Gym Time demonstrates that this building has always been dedicated to bodily performance, while changing over time as it reflects and broadens the university’s standards for healthy, acceptable, and idealized student body(ies).

Artist Tara Mateik brings President Roosevelt's White House boxing matches to Georgetown's Davis Center in "Roosevelt vs. Jonathan Edwards: A Boxing Performance!" Professor Maurice Joyce, Georgetown's first Athletic Director, famously refereed Roosevelt's sparring sessions in Washington—now the fight comes to his gymnasium. Through historical fantasy and political spectacle, Mateik embodies Roosevelt in a one-night-only boxing match against his own pet bear—a contest of strength, a performance of masculinity, and a revelation history tried to hide.

This exhibition was supported by the Georgetown Department of Performing Art as part of its Next: Incubating Creative Praxis series.

Panel Design by Alex Derwick.

Event Photographs Courtesy of Nathan Posner.