“… as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take […]
Looking back on 2025, AWTT Education Director Connie Carter calls on all of us to find the inspiration we need to meet the challenges of 2026.
AWTT welcomed middle-school and high-school students and their faculty sponsors for the 2025-26 Samantha Smith Chellenge kick-off event at Orono High School on November 13, 2025. In 2025-26 the Samantha Smith Challenge is getting a redesign. Instead of ending the SSC year with a big celebration of student projects—as AWWT has done in past years—we’re flipping the script, starting […]
As Labor Day 2025 approaches, we are mindful of all of the labor advocates who have gone before us, improving the lives of working people. If you go to the AWTT portrait gallery and filter for “worker’s rights,” you’ll find forty such outstanding figures who have fought and sacrificed over the decades, to bring workers […]
Thanks to former Times Union reporter Paul Grondahl for covering the unveiling of Dr. Alice P. Green’s portrait on May 22, 2025. Grondahl also wrote the brief AWTT biography of Green that accompanies her portrait. The following article includes exerpt’s from Grondahl’s report, which appeared in the Albany Times Union on May 28. ALBANY — When […]
Artist Robert Shetterly’s visit to the Oregon Episcopal School in Portland earlier this month was a resounding success. The school hung an exhibit of twenty portraits in their chapel during the month of May 2025 and invited Shetterly to visit for a day. The theme of the exhibit was ecojustice. Shetterly visited classes in all […]
About 200 middle-school and high-school students gathered at Orono (ME) High School May 20, 2025 to celebrate their participation in this year’s Samantha Smith Challenge. Approximately 500 students took part in this year’s program, although not all were able to make the trip to Orono. Schools represented include: Monarch Learning Academy (FL) Hazelwood Elementary School […]
Over twenty years ago, when AWTT artist Robert Shetterly began this portrait project to help himself cope with the United States’ bombing of Iraq, he didn’t anticipate the number of portraits that would follow, nor where they would take him. In the beginning, a few local schools and churches—curious about his project—invited him to talk […]
The Land Peace Foundation, founded by Sherri Mitchell Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset, is organizing a week-long walk, beginning on the banks of the Penobscot River and ending at the Maine capitol building. (The following information about the walk comes from the Land Peace Foundation website.) “The journey begins on April 22nd at the Penobscot Nation Boat Landing […]
In November 2024 – just days after the national election – AWTT artist Robert Shetterly was interviewed by journalist Steve Adubato in Atlantic City at the New Jersey Education Association Convention. In this riveting discussion, Shetterly shares his perspectives on the present moment through the lens of some of his most inspiring portrait subjects, including […]