The John Brown Lives! organization is hosting an outdoor exhibit of AWTT portrait reprints, from July 17 through October 31, 2025 at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, Lake Placid New York.

The portraits include abolitionist John Brown and Congressman John Lewis. The kick-off event for the exhibit was on the nationwide “Good Trouble Lives On” day of action, commemorating the fifth anniversary of Lewis’s death.  Other portraits include #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke, anti-war activist Rachel Corrie, environmentalist Bill McKibben, Albany-based community activist Dr. Alice P. Green, and organizer Rev. Lennox Yearwood.

Special events around the exhibit include a visit by AWTT artist Robert Shetterly on August 2, and a free concert and sing-along event, Americans Who Sing the Truth, with Magpie and Kim and Reggie Harris, on August 3. And site visitors will have two chances to view the prize-winning documentary film Truth Tellers about Shetterly’s work and some of his portrait subjects (dates to be announced).

David Escobar interviewed AWTT portrait artist Robert Shetterly for the Adirondack Explorer. The interview also aired on North Country Public Radio.  When asked about the “truths” he is looking for in his portrait subjects, Shetterly responds:

“. . . The truths I’m talking about are truths based around the essential values, or the founding values of the country, and whether they were lived up to by the people who wrote them or not.

There’s sort of three major sins of this country in relationship to its own ideals. One is native genocide. The other is slavery and racism. And the third is the obtuseness, the refusal to live by the laws of nature.

We chip away at working on racism issues and the relationships with not just people of color, but also Native people. And we’re in this existential moment about the environment. We’re being told to forget about it with incredible consequences for us, for our children, for our grandchildren and for the future of all species on this planet.

What becomes critical is who then insists that the country try to live up to its own ideals. If we’re going to talk about the pursuit of equality and justice and freedom that is available for everyone, who does that work?

Whether it’s about race, labor, the environment or gender or women’s rights, we don’t always know the truth, but what we do know is whether people are trying to get there or not, and if we see that we’re trying to work together to answer those problems, we can trust each other.

The other thing is, do we want to know who we really are? Do we want to know our identity? And if we answer yes to that, we have to know the truth about what we’ve done. I keep telling people this is not to say I want you to hate this country for what it hasn’t done. Instead, I want you to be inspired by the language of those ideals, which is so beautiful, and then be inspired by all the people who have sacrificed so much to make it real for everybody.”

Read or listen to the entire interview here.