Walk into the Slater Memorial Museum’s Converse Gallery, and you are greeted by famous faces, from George Washington to Einstein, in mammoth, 32-by-80-inch portraits.

All of these works are by Lyme artist Jac Lahav. He created monumental paintings for his “Great Americans” series that have been exhibited in museums including the Florence Griswold Museum in 2019. The idea behind the series is to question what constitutes a “great” American and to inspire viewers to contemplate the nature of fame.

But at the Slater, Lahav has added an intriguing new element: more than a dozen portraits of Norwich icons of the past.

Among the fresh additions are paintings of Virginia D. Christian, an education advocate who was the first Black woman to be elected to the Norwich Board of Education; Harry Rossol, the Norwich native who created Smokey the Bear (the portrait shows him working on a Smokey image); and Miantonomo, the Narragansett chief who played a pivotal role in the relationship between English colonists and Native Americans.

“I like celebrating some of the more underrepresented stories,” Lahav said.

There are lots of images of, say, George Washington in the world, and that’s what people might expect of a “Great American.”

“This series is starting to say, ‘Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we be celebrating some of these other figures that don’t get the spotlight?’ So it’s good for me to have the Founding Fathers in there, but really I’m starting to pivot away and use them more as an example to say, ‘These people are important, and these people hanging right next to them are just as important, if not maybe more,’” Lahav said.

On the main wall at the back of the Converse Gallery, for instance, adjacent to Lahav’s epic portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass is a painting of David Ruggles. Ruggles was a Norwich resident who was a prominent abolitionist. He had the first Black-owned book store in America. (Lahav painted a rose in Ruggles’ hat because Norwich is the Rose City and books around his feet, referencing his store.) Ruggles helped Douglass find his footing in New York City as a freed slave, Lahav said, and Douglass wed in Ruggles’ living room.

“These threads of history are so cool,” Lahav said.

One of the things he loves about this series is that it’s educational and it’s about American history, but it’s also about painting and portraiture, representation, surface, paint quality — “all those things are in there,” Lahav said.

The Ruggles work, as well as the portrait of Fidelia Hoscott Fielding, who was the last person to speak the Mohegan language, are part of the “Great Americans” series. The newer Norwich portraits are significantly smaller and more straightforward than those pieces.

Asked which facts he discovered while doing research for the Norwich portraits most surprised him, Lahav said, “All of them.”

“I find the interconnectedness of things (fascinating), especially today when everything is so polarizing. There are threads that unite us. And that can give us hope,” Lahav said.

The inspiration

The notion of painting portraits of Norwich-related figures came out of Lahav’s work with Public Art for Racial Justice Education. PARJE is an interracial, non-partisan organization of volunteers from southeastern Connecticut who want to bring communities together to achieve racial justice through art.

With PARJE, Lahav has done a lot of programs in Norwich, telling some of the histories of underrepresented people who were of importance to the city.

“These stories kept coming up, and I thought this was such a great experience to add to my series,” he said.

The plan is to publish a catalog accompanying the Norwich portraits, funded in part by an ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) grant that was administered by the Southeastern Connecticut Cultural Coalition.

Lahav said that, in the catalog, “we’re going to be telling some of these stories a little more in depth.”

People who did great things

Dayne Rugh, director of the Slater Memorial Museum, said that Norwich figures featured in Lahav’s portraits — like Ruggles, artist Ellis Ruley, philanthropist John Fox Slater (whose son presented the Slater Memorial Museum to Norwich Free Academy, the school that John Fox Slater endowed) and Benedict Arnold — are figures that have unique connections to Norwich and to themes throughout history.

“These are names that many people have heard, and then you have names that are not as well known. This is all part of the museum’s goal of celebrating and showcasing excellence in local arts as well as talking about stories that have strong local connections. Some of them are very difficult subjects to discuss, but they’re really important,” Rugh said.

“Museums are sort of like a forum for having these discussions. You have artwork as the means that grounds everybody in the context, and you’re able to then learn about the incredible lives of these people. I’m just delighted (Lahav) was inspired to include these pieces that pertain to Norwich because Norwich has absolutely incredible history and culture that, in my humble opinion, are not celebrated widely enough. I think we’re moving in the right direction because we’re seeing so many wonderful projects and movements come about throughout the city the past few years, so I’m encouraged by all of this.”

Rugh said that Norwich people like Ruggles and Ruley might not have the name recognition of the famous faces in the exhibition, “but you know what? Their own story is their own version of greatness. That’s what ties the show together. These people did incredibly great things that broke barriers and shattered all sorts of stereotypes and misconceptions all around you to create greatness that was unique to them.”

‘History is always changing’

Many of the portraits in the exhibition include variations of a deep blue hue, and it’s been a recurring color in Lahav’s work since the pandemic began. While blue can be seen as a depressive — people talk about having “the blues,” after all — he said it is also a vibrant and joyful color. Lahav was born in Israel, and he said that shade hearkens back to his childhood; it reminds him of the Mediterranean Sea and the blues a person sees walking around the Middle East.

Winding through parts of the Slater exhibition are vines that Lahav has crafted, also in a deep blue. The vines are recent additions to his work.

“These large vine installations are referencing plants and growth and nurturing because you have to nurture plants,” he said. “The idea is that when you look at a portrait of someone, you see them stuck in a moment in time, but history is always changing, and people are always changing. So the vines are sort of representing growth and change, and there are just so many analogies to be had with plants, (including) pruning — history also gets pruned sometimes … The meat of it is to say that their stories are continuing.”

How do you want to be remembered?

Rugh hopes that the Lahav exhibition inspires viewers to recognize that it’s not just a single person who defines what American greatness is. Instead, it’s something that is experienced and lived by everyone who has a story in the show.

Not only that, he said, but “you’re writing your own story, just as everybody else did depicted in these paintings. So whatever you end up doing in life, in some form or another, is going to be remembered by somebody. I think that’s what a lot of people tend to forget — that when you really dedicate yourself to creating a legacy of some sort, it’s going to continue to live on. People are going to remember you, they’re going to remember the things you did. At the end of the day, it’s quite important to ask yourself the question: How do you want to be remembered? How do you want society to remember you? It’s an unnerving question. … But it grounds you, and it’s such an eye opener.”

Next stop: Lyman Allyn

Lahav has another show coming up in August at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London. That one is going to focus on his foster care work (he and his wife are licensed foster parents). It’s a totally different series from the one at the Slater, he said, with a lot of abstract paintings. It does, though, continue the vines motif that is apparent at the Slater.

What: “Jac Lahav: The Great Americans”

Where: Slater Memorial Museum, 108 Crescent St., Norwich

When: Now through Sept. 8; hours 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon. and Wed.-Fri.

Admission: The museum is participating in the Summer at the Museum program, so all kids under 18 along with at least one adult are free. Regular admission is $10, with discounted admission of $8 for senior citizens, and active/retired military.

Contact: slatermuseum.org, (860) 425-5563