1948 Olympics: Sport in art: medals awarded

The Cultural Olympiad has been quietly running alongside the planning and preparations for the Games themselves since 2008, and will see its culmination with the opening of the London 2012 Festival in June. Cultural exhibitions and celebrations of the host country have been part of the modern Games since their inception - and, up to and including 1948, were also part of the medal tally. The international competition was held at the V&A, and included categories such as town planning and arts and crafts, although the Manchester Guardian expressed some scepticism over how easily the subject matter could apply to literature and song. Finland topped the medal table, and Great Britain scored one gold medal, for Alfred Thomson in the oils and watercolours category. By the 1952 Olympics, the practice of awarding medals for art had been abandoned, and the idea of art exhibitions took over instead. Jonathan Jones has argued that the Olympics are about sport, not art - although perhaps if the practice of awarding medals had continued, we would witness a completely different, more competitive attitude to the Cultural Olympiad today, with artists sponsored by Adidas and poetry written in relay.