LEWISTON – Museum L-A’s successful “Portraits & Voices: Workers of Seven Mills” exhibit will end its run Saturday, May 10, as the museum prepares for its next special exhibit.

Nearly 3,000 people have viewed “Portraits & Voices,” which centers around the life stories of 45 men and women who worked in Lewiston’s textile mills. “We are giving people one more chance to see this extraordinary exhibit which has touched so many lives and bridged generations,” said Rachel Desgrosseilliers, Museum L-A’s executive director.

Due to popular demand, the exhibit was extended beyond its original closing date of Feb. 28.

On May 10, light refreshments will be served as visitors get a final chance to view the portraits by documentary photographer Mark Silber and read and hear excerpts from oral histories in the museum’s first-floor gallery. Contemporary photographs by Bates College student Nels Nelson depict the mill buildings in their present state – some revitalized with new businesses and others in decay.

“First Shift Going Home,” a specially commissioned painting by Lewiston artist Ray Michaud, will remain on permanent display at the museum.

Museum L-A will no look ahead to preparing the gallery space for “Weaving a World: Lewiston’s Millworkers, 1920-1980.” This exhibit will trace the millworker experience from the hard times of immigration and the Great Depression through the prosperity of the 1950s to the decline of the mills in the 1970s. It represents the last phase of the Millworkers Oral History and Photo Documentary Project.

Work on oral history projects with brickmakers and shoeworkers is now in progress. New exhibits and programs are being developed to showcase their stories and the history of these industries in Lewiston-Auburn

Museum L-A is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call the museum at 333-3881.

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