SLUGGER MUSEUM EXHIBIT FANS INTEREST IN NEGRO LEAGUES
Rich Copley, Herald-Leader Arts Writer

LOUISVILLE -- Kadir Nelson was commissioned to do one painting depicting Negro Leagues Baseball, but he didn't stop there.

"While I was doing research, I found myself falling in love with the subject," Nelson said from his San Diego studio. "I really enjoy sports and history, and it was a perfect blending of the two. What's most interesting is the character of the players as a whole. They experienced prejudice and hardship, but they persevered."

Since that 1996 commission, Nelson has painted more than a dozen Negro Leagues images, three of which are featured in “Shades of Greatness.”

The Negro Leagues were where black players played professional ball before Major League Baseball was integrated. Though they were separate and not equal to the majors, the Negro Leagues featured many players who, baseball historians say, would have been stars in the Major Leagues if they had had a chance to compete with their white counterparts.

Many of them, such as pitcher Satchel Paige, are featured in Shades of Greatness, at exhibit at the Louisville Slugger Museum through July 11.

Images of Paige include Lonnie Powell's sepia-toned Looking Him Back and Steve Musgrave's mammoth Satchel Paige, an image of the righty on the mound in his red and white Kansas City Monarchs uniform framed by the names of his pitches, such as "midnight creeper" and "two-hump blooper." Nelson's “Low and Away” has Paige on the mound at Yankee Stadium in 1936, pitching for the Pittsburgh Crawfords to the Philly Stars' Slim Jones.

The museum was looking for an art exhibit when it ran across “Shades of Greatness,” which was organized by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., said Slugger Museum director Anne Jewell.

"It's kind of hard to find sports exhibits," Jewell said. "We were just checking in with the Negro Leagues Museum, and this knocked our socks off.
"We saw the opportunity to appeal to people in a number of ways. It crosses the lines between arts and sports."
The exhibit boasts works in a number of medums but primarily painting, with subjects that range from pointed commentary to lazy, hazy summer action.

"This confronts a lot of negative things that are still with us," Jewell said. "But at the same time, there's incredible pride, joy and passion for the Negro Leagues."

Sometimes those elements come close together, as in Kenneth Stanford's Game Day, a image of Chicago fans heading to a game decked out in Sunday dresses, hats, ties and suspenders, standing in a bus station under a "colored waiting room" sign.

Rob Hatem's Black and White shows the silhouette of a black batter with a baseball for his eye. In his statement with the painting, Hatem says, "For a black batter playing in a black league because the whites didn't want him in their white league, maybe -- just maybe -- it felt good to hit a white ball ... a small justice."

Other images subtract the oppressive overtone to depict sheer joy, such as Keith Shepherd's Sunday Best, showing fans dressed to the nines celebrating a Kansas City Monarchs home run. Bonnye Brown's Catch Me a Ballplayer shows female fans peering adoringly into the dugout, and Veronica Sublett's Beauty of the Game shows three women who played in the Negro Leagues.

"I really liked that the exhibit had the women's point of view," Nelson said.

Nelson made a big splash in 1999 when Sports Illustrated ran a six-page spread of his Negro Leagues images. For Shades of Greatness, he painted Willie Foster and Young Fans, a picture of the powerful southpaw pitcher looming large over kids who hold his equipment in the middle of a Pittsburgh street.

Another image is of Foster's half-brother, Rube Foster, who organized the first Negro League.

"I was interested in ennobling them as African-American men and communities," Nelson said. "I want to honor them and what they've done, the history they created. I wanted to have something out there for children of all colors to understand the contributions they made to history."

Reach Rich Copley at (859) 231-3217 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3217, or rcopley@herald-leader.com.

IF YOU GO

'Shades of Greatness'

What: An exhibition of art works inspired by Negro Leagues Baseball.

Where: Louisville Slugger Museum, 800 W. Main St.

When: Through July 11.

Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat.; also, noon-5 p.m. Sun. starting April 4.

Tickets: $6 adults, $5 ages 60 and older, $3.50 ages 6-12 and free ages 5 and younger. Tickets include entire museum and tour of the Louisville Slugger bat factory.

Phone: (502) 588-7228.