Carnegie Museum of Art

Through September 22
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Website

What better way to celebrate this week’s opening day of the 2014 Pirates season than with a visit to Carnegie Museum of Art‘s newest exhibition, Teenie Harris Photographs: Baseball in Pittsburgh. Baseball, photography and history converge in this insightful presentation of images by the pioneering Pittsburgh photographer and Hill District native, Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908–1998). During his 40-year career as photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s most influential black newspapers, Harris produced some 80,000 images of Pittsburgh’s African American community. From his days as a second baseman and founding member of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, to his after-hours socializing with legendary black athletes and his journalistic coverage of sports, Harris amassed a rich living archive of images tracing the history of black baseball in Pittsburgh.

Via 25 large prints, museum-goers of all ages will enjoy a behind-the-scene look at some of the greatest moments in Negro League, Major League and sandlot baseball in Pittsburgh. Also on view is a seven-minute video of a newly-recovered and digitized, never-before-seen 16mm film shot by Harris that portrays Negro League games at Forbes Field. Guest curated by Sean Gibson, executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, the exhibition is on view through September 22nd. Assisted by archivist Kerin Shellenbarger, Gibson selected images of icons Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell—as well as significant local moments such as the opening of the Uptown Little League’s racially integrated teams.

While there, be sure to also visit Carnegie Museum of Natural History to see RACE: Are We So Different?, a groundbreaking exploration of race in America. The first nationally traveling exhibition to examine race from biological, cultural and historic points of view, the exhibition features four rotations of a project completed by Harris in the 1960s and 1970s, which includes photographs of and conversations with people on the city’s streets, along with a contemporary version created by reporter Lynn Hayes-Freeland and photographer Nikkia Hall.

Jennifer has worked at the Mattress Factory, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Dahesh Museum of Art and is co-author of Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania. She also is co-coordinator of Handmade Arcade. Musically, she is in a band called The Garment District and is a founding member of Brooklyn's The Ladybug Transistor.