American Legacies: Who’s on First

November 18 - January 27

Since its inception in 1999, the Alva Gallery has presented a Legacies show every holiday season as a means of reflecting upon the passage of time and how it connects us. This show originated as family legacies and included multiple generations of artists within the same family. In 2005, it became American legacies, making it an invitational focusing on a cultural phenomenon pertinent to America. This year’s exhibition takes as its theme our national sport, Baseball, and is entitled American Legacies: Who's on First.

Being the child of baseball legend Hank Greenberg, the owner of the Alva Gallery often pondered how to meld her career with her father's. Standing on the field in Yankee Stadium representing her father during the ceremony for the issuing of the "Sluggers Series" 39-cent US postage stamps on July 15 of this year, she thought of a way; through the American Legacies show. As the American sport, baseball has a long history and a strong legacy. Like America, the sport is filled with players from various countries and ethnicities and was one of the first institutions in the country where barriers were broken.

Hank Greenberg was one of the first Jews in the sport and Jackie Robinson, whose widow lives in Connecticut, was one of the first blacks. Did breaking these barriers on the playing field help to break them within the society as a whole? What was the role of the baseball player within our culture in the past and what is it today?

These are some of the intriguing and provocative ideas that helped to shape the concept of Who's on First. The exhibition directly involves the participating artists and asks them to think of baseball from the vantage point of a team or a player or a fan, as a tangible object or a societal phenomenon, but most of all, to be creative!

Who's on First is an invitational featuring work by eleven artists in a variety of media including painting, photography, sculpture, collage, textile, pastel, and cartoons. Participating artists include Forrest R. Bailey, Benjamin Blackburn, Beverly Floyd, Jesse Good, Barkley L. Hendricks, Ted Hendrickson, Leslie Kuter, Gigi Liverant, Stewart Paley, Gar Waterman and Malcah Zeldis.