| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Exhibition Reviews

"Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers." Northern Indiana Center for History, 808 W. Washington, South Bend, IN 46601. Temporary exhibition, Sept. 28, 2002-Aug. 17, 2003. 3,500 sq. ft. Cheryl Taylor, project director-executive director; David Bainbridge, senior curator and designer; Jennifer Johns, registrar; Bryce Richter, curatorial assistant and designer; Sue Macy, guest curator and consultant; Travis Childs, education head; Marilyn Thompson, director of marketing. Guest lectures, panel discussions, commemorations of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and other women's sporting activities. Internet: visitor information and educational resources < http://www.centerfor history.org > (Sept. 17, 2004).
The rich history of women in American sports is the focus of the exhibition "Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers" housed at the Northern Indiana Center for History. On display thirty years after the passage of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, the exhibition celebrated famous women athletes, local college women's basketball champions, professional women basketball players, female ice skaters, amateur and professional women golfers, amateur and professional women tennis players, women soccer players, and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Through such artifacts as women's sporting costumes, photographs, film footage, and some interactive athletic items, the exhibit told a tale of women's breaking of barriers in sports through a fairly conventional script that referred to race and gender but offered little material about ethnicity, sexuality, or political and social movements linked with women in American sport history.	1
Paying tribute to the local Indiana female athletes of St. Mary's College who participated in such early women's sporting activities as field hockey, fencing, and basketball, the exhibition first centered on the growth of women's basketball. Photographs show changes in the women's game created in 1892 by Senda Berenson, physical culture director at Smith College. While the exhibition included trophies, women's gym costumes for basketball, and information on the way clubs helped popularize the game, the ethnic dimension of the basketball game was lacking. Berenson, a Jewish immigrant, spread women's basketball (with adapted rules to ensure women played a less physically demanding game than men did) to colleges—including black colleges—Young Women's Christian Associations (YWCA), and Young Women's Hebrew Associations. Artifacts of the South Bend Rockettes team, such as uniforms and trophies, and information about inductions into the Basketball Hall of Fame broadened the basketball history on display. A vivid section featuring the University of Notre Dame Women's 2001 National Collegiate Athletic Association champions drew the attention of Indiana visitors. On the timeline of women's achievements in basketball, biographical data seemed to highlight women as domestic beings. The text noted that Nancy Lieberman, a former collegiate star (and also a Jewish player) who in 1986 became the first woman to play in a men's professional league, is the "mother of one son" and that Sheryl Swoopes, a star in the Women's National Basketball Association who advertises her own Air Swoopes Nike basketball shoe, is the "mother of one son." What does this suggest about women, sexuality, and marriage in professional sports?	2
The section on soccer demonstrated the impact Title IX had via scholarships for star soccer players in the United States. There were posters of Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers and the famous poster of Brandi Chastain with her shirt removed after her team won the World Cup. What does this suggest about changes in the marketing of public images of women in sport? The artifacts of soccer jerseys, autographed World Cup balls, and soccer medals appealed to soccer enthusiasts.	. . .

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