There Gitterman Gallery present Jackie Robinson and the Color Linean exhibition of the collection of Paul Reifersonwhich uses photographs and artifacts to vividly tell the story of baseball’s journey toward integration.
Pioneering civil rights figure Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line when Martin Luther King, Jr. was still in college, earning King’s praise as “a peaceful fighter for civil rights avant la lettre.” The exhibition places Robinson’s odyssey as part of a larger adventure that began sixty years earlier, when men like Fleet and Weldy Walker, Sol White, Robert Higgins and Javan Emory played for teams integrated into the end of the 19th century.
Paul Reiferson is a dedicated collector driven by a passion for preserving American stories. “I saw that the color line transcended baseball, that it was about America fighting to solve a terrible problem, and that the stories of the people involved in that fight were extraordinary,” Reiferson said.
This exhibition of photographs, complemented by historical objects, highlights the pervasive racism and fervent aspirations for integration during this era. We hope that everyone, from collectors, to students and families with children, will be able to visit this exhibition. And through the experience of looking at these powerful images together, we hope to help foster a deeper appreciation of photography as a storytelling medium.
Nearly 500 prints from Charles M. Conlon’s collection of Reiferson photographs have been donated or promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many others have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Tampa Museum of Art, among others.
The collection is for sale in its entirety.
Jackie Robinson and the Color Line
April 15 – May 24, 2024
Gitterman Gallery
3 East 66th Street, 1B
New York, NY 10065
(212) 734-0868
www.gittermangallery.com
