Current Exhibits

OurStoryIsOne

#OurStoryIsOne is a global art movement that commemorates ten Baha’i women who were killed for their religious identity. This is also a personal story for Maine resident, local activist, and artist Parivash Rohani. Striking, bold artwork from around the world is expressed and shared through social media, especially on Instagram, as courageous people share their pain, protest, and courage through creativity. On 18 June 1983–41 years ago–10 Bahá’í women were taken to a square in Shiraz, Iran, under the cloak of night. After months of torture and imprisonment, they were mass executed without the knowledge of their families. One was 17, most in their 20s. Their crime was their belief in a faith that promoted gender equality, absent and criminalized in Iran, justice and truthfulness. They were hanged one by one, each forced to watch the next woman’s death in a harrowing attempt to coerce them into renouncing heir faith. None did. Today, in the blood, tears and wounds of thousands of young women in Iran fighting for equality, one can see the legacy of the 10 women of Shiraz. Though mistreated and imprisoned, today’s women—just like those before them—are bravely sacrificing to live in a more prosperous Iran. Learn more about Parivash and Nasser Rohani and their fight for justice and equality in Iran and around the world. The exhibit will remain at the Michael Klahr Center through February. This exhibition highlights how local women’s stories can become global symbols of standing up for justice and equality.

Reuse, Repair, Reconsider

Maine Artist Lesia Sochor’s Reuse, Repair, Reconsider Series is now on display in the Michael Klahr Center. The artwork explores the healing power of restoration and repair. She writes, "A humble act born of necessity, repair at one time was a common sense, commonplace task among the populace. The ever increasing consumer driven addiction for more, for new, and newer, adequate and fixable goods are simply discarded contributing to our threatened environment. I use a needle and thread as a representation to investigate mending as an intervention, as metaphor, as a call to action. Not only to restore material things, but as an intention to mend the fractured parts of ourselves, the divisiveness, cruelty, and injustices of our ruptured world one stitch at a time." Lesia has been a generous collaborator and friend to the HHRC community. She loaned us her Babushka and Pysanky paintings to grace the walls of the Michael Klahr Center, and will, for the third year, offer the popular Pysanky egg decorating workshop in the spring. Lesia is a prolific, imaginative, thoughtful artist delightful women. Thank you Lesia!

Coming in 2025

Through the Lens

Through the Lens: Creating Soul Survivors by Photographer Jack Montgomery will showcase his stunning portraits and new book. Writes Jack, “The things we save can become the means for our recovery. I am moved by every aspect of these stories … And I am forever grateful to the survivors for giving us this record, which no amount of denial or historical revisionism can ever erase. We are in their debt.” These books will be distributed to every school in Maine.

The Ravensbrück Series

This exhibit is a series of small painting by the late Brenda Bettinson created after she read Sarah Helm’s book about the enslavement, beatings, torture, rape, starvation, surgical experimentation and murder of the women at the Ravenbrück concentration camp. The series will be exhibited at the HHRC from June to September 2025.