I intended to write about immigrants. About our government’s demonization of immigrants. About the reasons people flee their homes, abandon their extended families and communities, take enormous risks and suffer humiliating hardships to get to some safer and healthier place. I wanted to talk about some of the people in this portrait collection who are from immigrant families—like Dr. […]
The organization John Brown Lives! is co-sponsoring an event at the John Brown Homestead on the afternoon of July 17, 2025. Reprints of twenty-five Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits will be featured. The opening of the AWTT art installation, including John Lewis‘s portrait, will take place from 3 -4 p.m., followed by a march […]
Some people use a recording of rain’s soothing white noise to put themselves to sleep. I like to be woken up by the real thing. My house is surrounded by old red oaks and on a warm, quiet night—the windows wide—a sudden downpour startles me happily awake, the oak leaves twitching and twittering like a million […]
Yesterday afternoon, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., 17 men and women dressed all in black, stood in a line on the street in the little village of Blue Hill, Maine. Each of us held an empty pot, open end toward the road, and a wooden spoon. We were bearing witness to the starvation in Gaza enforced by […]
Free and open to the public Celebrate Juneteenth with a day of art, activism, and community at the Albany Institute of History & Art. Inspired by the powerful individuals and their causes featured in Americans Who Tell the Truth, this free festival will feature performances, gallery tours, hands-on art activities, and opportunities to engage directly with […]
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 […]
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact. – William Stafford, from A Ritual to Read to Each Other I don’t want to be writing this. Probably there are better things for me to be doing. Especially because the massacre in Gaza has been […]
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 […]
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