Gitterman Gallery presents Jackie Robinson and the Color Line, an exhibition of the collection of Paul Reiferson, which uses photographs and artifacts to vividly narrate the story of baseball’s journey toward integration.
Jackie Robinson, a trailblazing figure in civil rights, shattered baseball’s color line when Martin Luther King, Jr. was still in college, earning praise from King as “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” The exhibition frames Robinson’s odyssey within a larger one that had begun sixty years earlier, when men like Fleet and Weldy Walker, Sol White, Robert Higgins,and Javan Emory played for integrated teams in the late 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 struggling to solve a terrible problem, and that the stories of the people in that fight were extraordinary,” Reiferson explained.
This exhibition of photographs, complemented by historic artifacts, illuminates the pervasive racism and the fervent aspirations for integration during that era. We hope everyone from collectors to students and families with children can visit this exhibition. By experiencing these powerful images together, we hope to help foster a deeper appreciation for photography as a medium of storytelling.
Nearly 500 prints from Reiferson’s collection of photographs by Charles M. Conlon have been gifted or promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many others have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, American Folk Art Museum, and 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
