Baseball Legend to Share Experiences, Perspectives in Aug. 17 Conversation

(Black PR Wire) ATLANTA Baseball Legend Henry Hank Aaron will share his experiences and perspectives in a conversation with noted artist and printmaker Joseph Norman Thursday, Aug. 17, at 6 p.m. in Clark Atlanta University's (CAU) Art Museum,  223 James P. Brawley Drive, S.W. Woodruff Arts Center CEO Doug Shipman will moderate the conversation. The event is free and open to the public. 

The event is part of the Annual Hank Aaron Heritage Weekend celebration and begins with a reception, followed by the moderated conversation at 7:15 p.m. in the adjacent Aldridge Auditorium. The evening will be hosted by Ambassador Andrew Young and Mrs. Carolyn Young, a CAU trustee, along with CAU Board Chairman Gregory Morrison and Mrs. Debra Morrison. 

"In addition to welcoming an iconic athlete and leader, Clark Atlanta is immensely proud to take part in helping to proliferate the wisdom that Hank Aaron continues to share," CAU President Ronald A. Johnson says. The event affords an opportunity for him to recollect his experiences in the context of Joseph Norman's masterful work, images that address issues of social justice, race and conflict. Norman's lithograph series, Out at Home: The Negro Baseball League, in particular, evokes an emotional response to baseball's history of segregation and discrimination so brilliantly capturing the relationship”one often veiled in sadness ”between players and the mainstream baseball enterprise." 

Aaron currently serves as senior vice president of the Atlanta Braves. After a career start with the Negro American League's Indianapolis Clowns, a brief period marked by overt racism, he played right field for the team 21 seasons, followed by two seasons for the Milwaukee Brewers, and held the Major League Baseball (MLB) career homerun record for 33 years. He retired from his athletic career in 1976, and joined the Braves executive ranks. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, and continues to hold several MLB records.

Scholars and art historians consider Joseph Norman, a professor of art in the University of Georgia's Dodd School of Art and a distinguished visiting professor of art at Johnson and Wales University, one of the most important African-American lithographers. The highly regarded educator and artist has lived and worked in Canada, Germany, Spain, Costa Rica and Cuba, and is regarded as a world-class draftsman and printmaker. His work is housed in some of America's most prestigious museums and public collections, including: The Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; the National Gallery; and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art."

"We are honored that Atlanta's Doug Shipman will moderate this conversation," Johnson says .His expertise as the founding director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, coupled with his passionate leadership and vision as the Woodruff Arts Center's new CEO, are going to make for a lively, thought-provoking exchange. This will indeed be an historic evening.

  For more information, or to RSVP for the Aug. 17 event, call 404-880-8566. For more on Clark Atlanta University's Art Museum, visit http://www.cau.edu/art-galleries/index.html.

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