Monday, November 2, 2026
6:00 pm –7:30 pm
In person: Wishcamper Center, Room 133
34 Bedford Street, Portland
Online: Via Zoom
Free and open to all | Registration required through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
Antisemitism does not stop at the doors of our museums, galleries, theaters, literary institutions, or other cultural spaces.
Join Maine Jewish Museum Executive Director Dawn LaRochelle for a timely and candid conversation about how antisemitism is surfacing in the arts and cultural world today… and why institutions devoted to creativity, expression, and inclusion are not immune from it.
Drawing on her experiences leading the Maine Jewish Museum, examples from Maine’s arts community, and developments in the wider worlds of art, culture, theater, and publishing, LaRochelle will examine some of the increasingly complicated questions facing artists and cultural organizations. What does contemporary antisemitism look like in cultural spaces? What happens when Jewish artists, stories, and institutions become proxies for a political conflict? Why can antisemitism be difficult to recognize even within communities deeply committed to fighting prejudice? And what responsibilities do cultural organizations have when artistic expression, political activism, and antisemitism collide?
The conversation will also explore the other side of that equation: the extraordinary capacity of art to challenge stereotypes, complicate assumptions, preserve memory, invite curiosity, and create connections across difference. At the Maine Jewish Museum, art is one way we tell the many — and sometimes contradictory — stories of Jewish life. It can also create space for conversations that are difficult to have anywhere else.
This program marks an exciting expansion of that work beyond the Museum’s walls, bringing MJM into the community for conversations about Jewish life, history, art, identity, and the questions shaping our world.
About Dawn LaRochelle
Dawn LaRochelle has served as Executive Director of the Maine Jewish Museum since 2022. Under her leadership, MJM has dramatically expanded its educational programming, statewide partnerships, exhibitions, public programs, and work documenting contemporary Jewish life in Maine. She has helped lead initiatives including Delet, the Museum’s K–12 education program; the Portland Jewish History Trail; the redevelopment of MaineJews.org, a statewide digital archive of Jewish history; and the Ampersand Project, an ambitious exploration of the remarkable diversity of Jewish life in Maine.
LaRochelle is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School and holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Graduate School of Education. Her professional life has spanned law, education, entrepreneurship, food, nonprofit leadership, and the arts.
Presented in partnership with Portland Ovations and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Southern Maine.
FREE & OPEN TO ALL
Registration is free but required.
Register through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLII) at USM website
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