Museum L-A, an institution presenting the story of work and community in Lewiston-Auburn, opens the exhibition Portraits and Voices: Workers of Seven Mills at 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, in the Bates Mill Complex, 35 Canal St. Supported by a Bates College Harward Center Grant for Publicly Engaged Academic Projects, the museum’s first temporary major exhibit remains open through Feb. 28, 2008. The museum’s first-floor gallery is open to the public 10 a.m. through 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

Called “extraordinary” by Harward Center director David Scobey,  the exhibition consists of 45 photographic portraits of retired millworkers taken by Mark Silber, a cultural anthropologist, photographer, oral historian, author and organic farmer. Silber has written and illustrated a number of books on a broad range of subjects, including local histories of Sumner and Rumford, Maine, organic gardening and stock car racing. He has taught at Bates, the University of Southern Maine and other institutions.

Each exhibition photograph is accompanied by an excerpt from the depicted millworker’s oral history interview, produced by Andrea L’Hommedieu, an oral historian for the Bates College Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

Bill Low, assistant curator at the Bates College Museum of Art, co-designed and helped to install Portraits and Voices. To support his work on the exhibition, Low was one of eight Bates faculty and staff to receive a 2007 Harward Center for Community Partnerships grant, given for publicly engaged teaching, research, cultural and other community projects.

While Silber’s photographs portray the workers, Bates photographer Nels Nelson ’07 uses his camera to explore the historic, largely unoccupied Bates Mill Complex. “Representation in handmade images is illusory, but photographs …  can be mirrors of specific times and places,” Nelson wrote for his senior thesis exhibition work. Nelson’s archival digital prints that are hung in Museum L-A, he says, “are a record of these spaces before their eventual renovation or destruction.”

In addition to Portraits and Voices, the Harward Center and Bates faculty members have partnered with Museum L-A to collect oral histories and create a traveling social-history presentation about the mills and the 20th-century millworker experience. This exhibit will open in November.

The Where’s Rumford? exhibit consists of over 70 photographs by Mark Silber, of Sumner, and excerpts from interviews with Rumford residents conducted by Linda Farr Macgregor. Started in 1999, the exhibit is a product of the Rumford Bicentennial Oral History Project 2000. The project is cosponsored by the Rumford Public Library and the Rumford Historical Society and supported by grants from the New Century Community Library Fund, the Maine Humanities Council, The Betterment Fund, Mead Paper Division and the Maine Community Foundation.

The exhibit first opened July 2, 2000, as part of the town’s bicentennial ceremonies and was on display in the Rumford municipal building through December. Christopher M. Beam, Bates College archivist, said the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library is a logical place to host the exhibit.

“Muskie was born and raised in Rumford and the community formed the bedrock of his distinguished career” as a Maine governor, U.S. senator, vice presidential and presidential contender, and U.S. secretary of state. Beam continutes, ”The exhibit will give visitors a sense of the vitality and values of the community that shaped his life and led directly to his many contributions to Maine and national politics, community development and the protection of the environment.”

The opening will include several speakers who will discuss various aspects of the exhibit and the history project. Donald E. Nicoll, long-time friend and political associate of Muskie and the current director of the Muskie Oral History Project, will discuss the influence of the community on Muskie’s life.

Dean of the College James W. Carignan will deliver welcoming remarks. Linda Macgregor, Mark Silber and several Rumford residents featured in the exhibit will comment on how the project has influenced their view of their community. Rumford Stories, a publication based on the project, will be available for purchase.

Dedicated in 1985, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library documents the Bates alumnus’ career in public service, from his first election to the Maine House of Representatives in 1946 to his 21 years in the U.S. Senate to his appointment as U.S. secretary of state in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Each year it sponsors lectures, symposia and conferences on national and state politics, foreign policy and the environment.

The Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, 70 Campus Avenue, is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.