History
Did the Olympics ever give medals for art?
The short answer
Yes. From 1912 to 1948 the Olympic Games awarded medals in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, with the rule that every entry had to be inspired by sport. About 150 medals were handed out before the contests were dropped over the question of whether artists were professionals.
Pierre de Coubertin, who revived the modern Olympics, thought of the ancient Games as a festival of body and mind together and wanted both in the modern version. He got his way in 1912, when Stockholm added five arts competitions alongside the running and jumping. He also quietly entered a poem under a pseudonym, and won gold.
The rules required every work to be about sport. Painters painted boxers, sculptors sculpted discus throwers, composers wrote Olympic hymns, and architects submitted stadium designs. The art contests ran at every Games from 1912 to 1948, and by 1928 the categories had split into sub-events, so a writer could medal in lyric, epic or dramatic literature.
The contests died of the same thing that haunted the sports: amateurism. Olympians were supposed to be unpaid, but nearly every serious artist sold their work, and the exhibitions themselves became marketplaces. After London 1948 the medals were dropped and replaced by a non-competitive cultural festival. The International Olympic Committee no longer counts the art medals in its tables, which is why you have never seen a country's total include a watercolour.