At its best, art confronts the world around it honestly and head on and forces the viewer to come face to face with the reality of the world in which he or she lives.

This truism will come to life again at the American University Museum from November 6 to December 30, with the showing of 90 paintings and drawings that depict the experiences of the inmates of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. The AU exhibition, entitled Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib, marks only the third time these works by the world-famous Latin American artist have been shown in the United States—and the first time in an American museum.

Unlike the now-famous photographs that revealed the inhumane treatment of the prisoners by American military personnel, Botero uses his signature volumetric style and large canvases to focus on a different subject: the suffering of the inmates. “It becomes very personal,” says Jack Rasmussen, the museum’s director. “With the photos, the viewer’s focus was primarily on the people inflicting the torture: Botero does not show us the perpetrators but concentrates on their victims and their suffering and dignity.”

This season, AU’s departments art and performing arts have focused on illuminating the issue of human rights abuse through works of visual art, dramatic performance, and music. “It’s an issue of our time and about our time,” says Gail Humphries Mardirosian, chair of the Department of Performing Arts. “Artists are often the ones asking the difficult questions—they are often the harbingers of change.”

The AU performing arts season opened on August 30 with a production of Death and the Maiden, Ariel Dorfman’s play about a South American woman who, 20 years after being brutally tortured under a political dictatorship, confronts the man whom she believes was the perpetrator. Nearly 15 years after the play was written, it is still “horribly relevant,” says Humphries Mardirosian, who directed the production. “Watching it provokes thought and encourages us to grapple constructively with these issues.”

“Seeing Death and the Maiden again really got me thinking,” says Elisa Massimino, the Washington director of Human Rights First, an organization that promotes human rights and protects people whose rights are at risk.

Following the show’s second performance, Massimino participated in a panel discussion on human rights abuse. Also on the panel were Humphries Mardirosian and AU artist in residence Vladimir Angelov, the show’s choreographer and movement consultant. Caleen Sinnette Jennings, a professor in the department and the show’s vocal coach, moderated the discussion.

“A lot of things have changed over the past 25 years,” Massimino says. “One change for the better is the virtual explosion of human rights organizations around the world and the acceptance by most countries of these standards as binding. But since 9/11, the big shift has been that the global human rights leader—the country largely responsible