Americans Who Tell the Truth

Standing up for what one believes to be fair and just is part and parcel of democracy and the American tradition.  Americans Who Tell the Truth, an art exhibit in San Francisco, features portraits of Americans who have stood up for their principles.  Over 50 portraits by acclaimed artist Robert Shetterly will be included along with art and written works by Bay Area middle and high school students responding to Shetterly's portraits.  This San Francisco exhibit features Bay Area truth tellers, including Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Waters, Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Van Jones, Eva Paterson, and others and is shown at both the African American Arts and Culture Complex and the Administrative Offices of the Courts (the Milton Marx Conference Center) from from Jan. 22 to April 6, 2008.

"What do Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth - Daniel Ellsberg, Van Jones  and Lateefah Simon share in common?" asks Ruth Morgan, executive director of Community Works, a 13-year-old Bay Area non-profit arts and education organization.  "They're all concerned with the safeguarding of our democracy.   Community Works has produced and curated this exhibition of national and Bay Area luminaries to create dialogue about what we value most in democratic society and the importance of truth telling."

"Dr. King didn't get famous giving a speech that said,'I have a complaint,' " says Van Jones, civil rights attorney, author and president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a non-profit based in Oakland that promotes positive alternatives to violence and incarceration.  "It's time for us to start dreaming again and invite the country to dream with us. We don't  have any throw away species, nations, or children. We must birth a global green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

Students Give Voice
During the course of the exhibition and in the months preceding it, students in five school and eight classrooms as well as elementary students in an after school program at the African American Arts and Culture Center will have studied Shetterly’s work and will produce aconcurrent exhibition of visual and written work in response to the portraits and to truth telling.  The students' work will also be exhibited at the African American Arts and Culture Complex (AAACC).  Shetterly’s portraits will be in AAACC’s Sargent Johnson Gallery.  Students, along with the honorees and artist Shetterly, will speak at this opening event.

"Community Works’ programs use the arts and education, as a means to empower youth to become advocates for the change they want to see in themselves and in their communities," Morgan says.  "Americans Who Tell the Truth reminds us that individuals working together can make a difference.”

What Makes those Featured Noteworthy
Robert Shetterly began painting his truth tellers' series in the fall of 2001, shortly after 9/11, "as a way to channel his anger and grief.”  Americans Who Tell the Truth has traveled to schools, universities, churches and galleries around the county since 2003.  The exhibition highlights important Americans past and present whose dignity, courage, honesty, generosity, compassion, wisdom, tolerance, belief, and relentless quest for truth have shaped this country.

Shetterly started painting these portraits as a way of surviving a dishonest and immoral time.  "I wanted to heal my alienation from my own country by surrounding myself with the spirits of Americans I admire," says Robert Shetterly.  " I learned that our country lives up to its own ideals only when people of conviction and courage demand it. These are a few of those people and they are role models for all of us."

More about Robert Shetterly and the book Americans Who Tell the Truth
Shetterly has painted more than 90 portraits honoring American luminaries past and present.  The first 50 of Shetterly's portraits are featured in the book  Americans Who Tell the Truth (published by Dutton, 2005, 46 pages, full color, suitable for all ages but with a target audience of middle and high school).  Americans Who Tell the Truth has won the 2006 award of the International Reading Association for intermediate non-fiction.  The Children's Book Council has named Americans Who Tell the Truth a 2006 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People.