NEWS RELEASE

Oakland Museum of California
www.museumca.org

 

10th & Oak Streets
OAKLAND, CA 94607

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9 September 2006

 

SPORTS: BREAKING RECORDS, BREAKING BARRIERS

Stories & Legends That Transformed the Sports World

 

Althea. Ali. Pelé. Jackie. Mia. Kristi. The dynamic interaction of athletes, audiences, and the media has had an extraordinary impact on American life over the past century and a half. SPORTS: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers, a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution, looks at athletes whose achievements shaped-and were shaped by-moments of social and historical change in the U.S.

 

SPORTS: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers opens at the Oakland Museum of California on Saturday, September 23, 2006, and continues through Sunday, January 6, 2007. Oakland is the seventh stop on the exhibition's 10-city, three-year national tour.

 

The exhibition focuses on 35 history-making athletes and their performances in 17 different sports. Women's changing roles, racial and ethnic integration, the emergence of sports celebrities and superstars, nationalism, perceptions about physical limitations, and technological breakthroughs that enhanced performance are covered in the show.

 

"The history of breaking records and barriers in Bay Area sports runs long and deep," said Mark Medeiros, deputy director, Oakland Museum of California. "It's evident in SPORTS, with Oakland's own Bill Russell chosen as exhibition ambassador."

 

The museum has highlighted six local athletes' stories to supplement the national show. In addition to Russell, Olympic gold medalist Andre Ward, baseball's Dave Stewart, football coach Skip Madigan, the new USF Athletic Director Debi Gore-Mann, and Jill Vialet, founder of the Sports4Kids school athletic program, are featured.

 

The national exhibition is divided into six sections: Firsts; Olympians; Game Makers; Barrier Removers; More Than Sports Champions; and Superstars. Each section profiles specific athletes, with their stories, photographs, medals, and gear.

 

Spotlighting the Smithsonian's sports collection, the exhibition opens with Abraham Lincoln's handball and closes with Michael Jordan's basketball jersey. Kristi Yamaguchi's Olympic skating dress, Sandy Koufax's baseball glove, Lance Armstrong's yellow jersey, and a "Miracle on Ice" hockey shirt are among the artifacts.

 

"SPORTS vividly portrays the men and women who pioneered, excelled, and influenced their sport; championed their country, race, or gender; and helped others to achieve," stated Ellen Roney Hughes, the exhibition's curator and a cultural historian at the Museum of American History. "These individuals broke records for themselves and for us all."

 

The national exhibition also features a short video that further explores the athletes featured in the section "More than Sports Champions." Produced and donated by The History Channel, the video is narrated by basketball legend and Oakland native Bill Russell. It looks at athletes, such as Billie Jean King, Roberto Clemente, and Mohammad Ali, who took their roles as public figures seriously and moved beyond being sports champions to become champions for a cause.

 

An interactive Web site includes a virtual tour of the exhibition, resource lists, a historical timeline, and sports trivia (www.americanhistory.si.edu/sports). A small-format, full-color book by Hughes, Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers (Scala Publishers), with a foreword by Bill Russell, accompanies the exhibition.

 

The museum plans a public program, Dreamgirls-Girls and Women in Sports, on Sunday, October 15, 1-4 p.m. There will be a soccer documentary and activities to pay tribute to the women and girls who have taken Title IX-and run with it. The program is included with museum admission.

 

SPORTS was developed by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). Audi is the exclusive national sponsor of the exhibition.

 

SITES has shared the wealth of Smithsonian collections and research programs with millions of people outside Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years. It connects Americans to their shared cultural heritage through a wide range of exhibitions about art, science and history, which are shown wherever people live, work and play, including museums, libraries, science centers, historical societies, community centers, botanical gardens, schools, and shopping malls. Exhibition descriptions and tour schedules are available at www.sites.si.edu.

 

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