International Tennis Hall of Fame Breaking More than Records

By: Amy Saramago
Posted In: Sports

In honor of Black History Month, the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. is displaying an exhibit called “Breaking the Barriers.” The exhibit will honor the history of African Americans in tennis including Hall of Famers like Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson and even touches upon influential African Americans playing the game today like Venus and Serena Williams and James Blake. Nicole Markham, curator of collections for six years, has been working on the expansion of this exhibit. What started as one case has now flourished into a whole room and will eventually evolve into the exhibit for the U.S. Open this summer in Flushing, N.Y.

What is your job title here at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and what does it involve?

I’m the curator of collections; I’m basically responsible for all the objects in the museum.responsible for the care, for the documentation, the display of the exhibits. We have a small staff so there are several of us who take care of collections on a regular basis. We work with loans from Hall of Famers.also.because this type of museum is very different than other types of museums, where you are not dealing with living personalities as much as we are, like dealing with Pete Sampras coming in this summer. We have to deal with him and his people to get memorabilia so we can create an exhibit for him. In regards to this exhibit, “Breaking the Barriers,” .just by doing a small exhibit, it helps identify where we have gaps in our collection so we know which stories we would like to tell and if we can’t tell them with objects, where would we go to get objects.

Is it hard to get people to donate things to the museum?

It is and it isn’t. We have quite a bit of material on loan from individuals. But we are dealing with these peoples’ crowning achievements. I mean, sure, nowadays players get a check for winning, Serena Williams for winning the Australian Open last week probably took about $1 million. But, that money just goes into a bank account.but the trophy she has is a memory, a visual memory. Sometimes it’s hard for them to let go, which you can’t blame them. If I had a trophy, I’d be polishing that thing everyday. That’s why we often work with loans.it’s on loan to us from them, they know its insured, that it’s being taken cared of by professionals who know how to handle objects, and at the same time they know that they aren’t really relinquishing control.

Are you the curator for all exhibits in the museum or just for the Black History month exhibit?

Most of our exhibits are joint ventures because we have a small staff, usually we all have input into it. We do about five to seven temporary exhibits a year.our temporary exhibits are often keyed into who’s coming into the Hall of Fame each year. In regards to this exhibit [Breaking the Barriers] we usually do something tiny for Black History Month. We, in the past, had one case or a handout that showed where artifacts were in the museum, but this year we decided to expand it.We do an exhibit at the U.S. Open every year, and it’s a different theme exhibit every year, and the USTA (United States Tennis Association) gives us money and we develop, design, install, work it, deinstall it and bring it back to Newport. This coming year for the 2007 U.S., we are planning on doing an exhibit on the ATA (American Tennis Association), which was the Black Tennis Association, which is still in existence. We decided; why not already expand what we normally do for Black History Month? We can start putting some of that research together so we can put something together almost as a teaser for the exhibit for the one we do in the summer. Even if you’re not in tennis, most people who study American history are going to recognize the names of Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. and there are so many other important African American figures and the roots of African American tennis are so deep and people don’t even realize.

What does the Black History Month exhibit showcase specifically? Are there particular players or memorabilia that are just exclusive for this exhibit?

The big names are Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson because they are Hall of Famers.not everything we have related to all these players are necessarily in this room [the exhibit]. We do have things that are displayed elsewhere [in the museum]. Material we have related to Arthur Ashe in this room isn’t so much player memorabilia.but tells the story of Arthur’s life more about the social activist part, the life beyond tennis. What we’ve been striving to do is to put these athletes, these idols, in the bigger picture of life. You can’t play tennis at that competitive level your entire life. What do you do when you are done? Arthur is a wonderful example of that because he was such a social activist related to racial issues and later on in his life after he was forced to publicly admit that he had contract HIV by a blood transfusion and getting into the AIDS activism up until his death in 1993. In regards to Althea Gibson, we have on display three items on loan from the Schomberg Center for Research for Black Culture, which is part of the New York Public Library.Nowadays, most people know Serena Williams, Venus Williams and James Blake, so we have some memorabilia for them. We also cover the very early days of the ATA, which is the oldest African American sports association in the USA and was founded in 1916.

The “Breaking the Barriers” exhibit, how long is it running?

We started in recognition of Black History Month.we’ll hopefully be able to keep it up even longer through the spring, hopefully through March.We had an article in January in Tennis Week magazine about doing this exhibit.which was great because when you promote something, you never know with any topic if people are going to disagree.We’ve had somebody who ripped out that article and in black sharpie are like, ‘when are you going to do an exhibit on white tennis, you’re racist,’ and put it an envelope with no return address. You are always going to have someone who doesn’t get it. That’s part of the problem with sports and just the history of tennis being always seen as the elite sport. That’s why so many of these stories that were just dying to be told that were out there have never been told because of the way society always looked at them.

Do you feel that the public still views tennis as a “white rich” person sport? Do you think the governing bodies of tennis like the USTA would like to see more diversity in the future?

In regards to diversity. that is definitely part of all of our missions to promote across the board. Whether it’s still seen as the stereotypically stuffy sport.I hope not. I mean I don’t see it that way.

Who is currently your favorite tennis player?

It is about either whether you love watching a tennis player, or how they play, or if you like their personality. Personally, one of my favorites, who is no longer really playing, is Patrick Rafter.of Australia, who was inducted just this year.I just loved watching him. As current players.Roger Federer is just dominating the men’s tour, and part of you is just like, ‘Can somebody beat him?’ At the same time, it’s something beautiful to watch. On the women’s side.Serena is amazing to watch.She came onto the court [at the Australian Open] and you just knew she was going to win. The power was just there.