My grandparents kept two framed prints on a wall over my father’s childhood bed (the one I used when I stayed over at their apartment in the Bronx). One was by the Mexican social activist David Alfaro Siqueiros, the other was by Ben Shahn, the American “social realist.” They were gifted to my grandfather from the garment workers union to which he belonged.
As a child, my favorite art books were Shahn’s monographs, which were always on the living room table. His work was at once impressionistic, expressionistic and realistic. He was brilliant at sussing out the issues of the day without hammering the message through ideological or dogmatic imagery—his work breathed air rather than strangled the viewer with dogma. I cannot recall the last exhibition that spotlighted his work (it has been some 50 years), but I return often to my Shahn monographs and assign my students to read his insightful book of essays The Shape of Content.
Now, Shahn is back: From May 23–Oct. 12, you can catch the first major U.S. exhibition devoted to his output at the Jewish Museum in New York. Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity examines the artist’s lifelong (1898–1969) commitment to social justice and the contemporary resonance of his work. As the museum notes, “The exhibition draws its title from Ben Shahn’s credo of ‘nonconformity,’ which the artist asserted as an indispensable precondition for both significant artistic production and all great societal change. This philosophy is centered in the exhibition as the foundational thread that runs through the artist’s oeuvre, which investigates issues such as unemployment, discrimination, authoritarianism and threats to freedom of expression, while championing labor, civil and human rights. Shahn’s later spiritual work, which embraces the Hebrew language and biblical stories, also reflects his exploration of a tradition of social justice activism within Jewish culture.”
Ben Shahn, Integration, Supreme Court, 1963, tempera on paper mounted on masonite, 35 1⁄2 x 47 1⁄2 in. (90.2 x 120.7 cm.). Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation Inc., 1964.6. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The exhibition includes artwork and ephemera from throughout Shahn’s career, on loan from more than 30 museums, galleries and private collections. Across seven sections, Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity explores the artist’s multifaceted use of photography and mass media, his inventive repurposing of imagery, and his layered interrelations of word and image. In the illuminating conversation below, guest curator Laura Katzman, professor of art history at James Madison University, and collaborating curator Stephen brown of the Jewish Museum New York, explain the importance of Shahn’s art.
Ben Shahn, Years of Dust, 1936, lithograph, 37 7⁄8 x 25 in. (96.2 x 63.5 cm.). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer, 1947.
Why has it taken so long for there to be a retrospective of Shahn’s work?
Laura Katzman: Art world trends in the United States in the decades following Shahn’s death in 1969—which favored abstraction, pop, happenings/performance, conceptual, minimalist art over figuration—led to an overshadowing (in some art circles) of Shahn’s social realist, or what was called “social viewpoint,” art in his day.
Shahn was an activist, and significant aspects of his work address the political and social struggles of his era. Museums, often concerned with neutrality, are not always comfortable dealing with political artists.
Organizing a Shahn retrospective is a massive endeavor that involves a major commitment of museum resources: research, conservation and funding. There is no catalog raisonné of Shahn’s work; his art is held in public and private collections, in large and small museums across the U.S. (also in some European countries, and a lot in in Japan). Numerous works remain in private hands. Many key paintings are in need of major conservation work.
While this is the first career-spanning retrospective of Shahn’s art in the U.S. in nearly 50 years, at the time of his centenary (1998–2001), U.S. museums hosted three important exhibitions that brought his work to the fore. But these were focused on specific aspects of his work: They were not retrospectives. Japan has hosted major exhibitions on Shahn since 1970 and up through recent decades.
Stephen Brown: Shahn died in 1969. Since that time, cultural emphasis in the West has been placed on balancing representation, whether by race or gender, with the result that certain white male artists have ceded place. In addition, Shahn’s work was engaged, sometimes directly, with the political and social struggles of his times. This engagement has been less attractive for exploration by established institutions.
Ben Shahn, New York, 1947, tempera on paper mounted on canvas and panel, 35 15/16 x 47 15/16 in. (91.3 x 121.8 cm.). Jewish Museum, New York. Purchase: Oscar and Regina Gruss Charitable and Educational Foundation Fund, 1996-23. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Shahn was active as a painter, social realist, poster artist, illustrator, illuminator and photographer. Did being involved in so many disciplines help or hinder his career?
Katzman: Shahn’s engagement in multiple media, especially reproductive media like prints and photographs, and public art like murals, as well as his extensive work in graphic design and commercial illustration, extended his reach far beyond the “fine art” world at the time. This brought Shahn wide attention and great popularity. Working with innovative art directors like Cipe Pineles, William Golden (CBS) and Leo Lionni, Shahn elevated the quality of magazine and advertising art. He exerted a towering influence on the field of modern commercial design, including on lettering and typography. Simultaneously, the prejudices and hierarchies that existed in the art world regarding “fine art” vs. commercial art, graphic design and illustration, certainly affected Shahn’s career. But most remarkably, he managed to thrive in both the “fine art” and commercial art worlds. Shahn only took on assignments if he believed in the corporation or cause, and only if he was given complete artistic freedom. He brought the same aesthetic sensibility and high standards to his graphic design and commercial work as he did to his painting. While painting was the medium he said he could most fully express himself in, he did not typically have a hierarchy of media, because it was images (in any medium) and communication with images, that reigned supreme for him. Even after he began working regularly in commercial art in the Postwar period, he was still recognized by major art-world institutions. His work was selected by the Museum of Modern Art (along with Willem de Kooning) to represent U.S. painting at the Venice Biennale in 1954. His art was collected and exhibited by major museums in the 1950s and ’60s, and MoMA curator James Thrall Soby authored three catalogs/books on his work in 1947, 1957 and 1963. MoMA organized major global traveling exhibitions of Shahn’s work between 1961–1963.
Ben Shahn, The Church is the Union Hall, 1946, tempera on board, 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm.). High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Purchased with funds from Sherri and Jess Crawford, High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, the American Art Collectors, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Schwob, and Mr. and Mrs. John L. Huber, 2003.63. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Shahn’s social justice work is among his most lasting statements. How do you balance his politics and art?
Katzman: Shahn’s most powerful political or social justice work is also moving and aesthetically compelling art. In other words, the power of his social justice work comes from his richly layered aesthetic vision and innovative artistic techniques: his use of photography and engagement with mass media; his repurposing of images across various media; his use of Modernist conceptual strategies (“art within art” or “text with text”); and the interrelationship between word and image that he experimented with in his prints, posters and paintings. Shahn’s art and politics were intertwined, which contributed to the enduring aspect of his social justice work. His art and politics were of a piece, two sides of the same coin; each enriched the other. The exhibition presents these aspects of his work as interconnected, not separate from each other. It aims for a holistic view of the artist, to show his depth and breadth.
Brown: Shahn fulfilled the realist injunction of “being of his times.” In other words, Shahn, in his own way, joined his social philosophy to the visual languages of his day, which included both direct observation and commentary (abetted by his photography) and (in the Postwar period) imaginative formal leaps related to abstractive tendencies to express moral and spiritual concerns. His art and politics were inextricably connected.
Ben Shahn, Harvesting Wheat [study for The Meaning of Social Security mural, Washington, D.C.], 1941, Buon fresco on wallboard, 33 x 44 1⁄2 in. (83.8 x 113 cm.). D. Wigmore Fine Art Inc., New York.
In The Shape of Content, Shahn discusses how his allegorical work was not favored by Henry McBride, an otherwise supportive New York art critic. What impact did this have on Shahn?
Katzman: Henry McBride (in the New York Sun), according to Shahn’s early biographer Selden Rodman, offered “a curiously McCarthyism analysis” of Shahn’s Postwar painting Allegory (1948), attaching communistic political meanings to its red fire beast and red tonalities—“a subtle tribute” to the Soviet Union. Shahn took this reductive and wrongheaded analysis as an attack and put him on the defensive. It led him to write the essay (later a book) “The Biography of a Painting,” an insightful and searching treatise on the many influences and inspirations (conscious and unconscious) that go into the making of a work of art. It’s critical to see McBride’s comments in the context of the early Cold War climate in the U.S.: the anticommunist crusades led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his cronies; HUAC investigations of those deemed disloyal or subversive to the U.S. government; and Republican Congressman George Dondero’s hard-hitting attacks on modern art. Despite such criticism, Shahn was given a mid-career retrospective at MoMA in 1947; he was the youngest artist up to that point to be given such an honor. Shahn’s biographers at the time, to counter such criticism, endeavored to promote him as a liberal artist who was appreciated by the left and the (moderate) right (i.e., business magazine editors), and that he was truly an “American” artist.
Ben Shahn, For Full Employment After the War, Register, Vote [Welders], 1944, offset lithograph, 28 3⁄4 x 39 in. (73 x 99.1 cm.). Collection of Michael Berg, Fairfax Station, Virginia. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
How have you organized the exhibition? Does his partisan work have a “conversation” with his controversial work?
Katzman: The exhibition is organized thematically across seven sections (though with some chronology in the first half of the exhibition) … Art and Activism; A New Deal for Art; The Labor Movement; War and Its Aftermath; Age of Anxiety: The Cold War; The Struggle for Civil Rights; and Spirituality and Identity. The exhibition is thoroughly contextual, with extensive ephemera displayed in eight vitrines containing source material such as newspaper clippings and his own documentary photographs; mainstream and progressive magazines that reproduced his illustrations; books that show how his art was disseminated in its day; and his hand-illuminated and hand-scripted books, including those with Hebrew calligraphy, which he mastered.
The exhibition aims to integrate Shahn’s art in different media and art made for different purposes. The exhibition places the work from the various aspects of career in conversation with one another to show, for example, that his commercial assignments were inextricably linked to his painting. He often executed a painting as a preparatory work for a poster or magazine cover, and his commercial illustrations often inspired new paintings and works in other media. Once Shahn recognized the power of an image, in mass media or in documentary photographs, he had the capacity to use it and reuse it in different contexts and for different purposes. The exhibition also places the more overtly political work in conversation with work without direct political content. But again, the presentation encourages audiences to make connections between works rather than seeing them as separate entities. The exhibition works towards a nuanced view of Ben Shahn, artistically and politically.
Ben Shahn, Scotts Run, West Virginia, 1937, tempera on paper mounted on wood, 22 5⁄8 x 28 1⁄4 in. (57.5 x 71.8 cm.). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, 38.11. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Ben Shahn, We Shall Overcome [from the Nine Drawings Portfolio], 1965, offset lithograph, 22 1⁄4 x 16 1⁄8 in in. (56.5 x 40.9 cm.). Madison Art Collection, James Madison University. Gift of Michael Berg, 2018, 2018.3.8. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Ben Shahn, Study for Jersey Homesteads mural, c. 1936, tempera on paper on Masonite, 19 1⁄2 x 27 in. (49.5 x 69.9 cm.). Collection of Marlene and Alan Gilbert, Greenwich, CT. Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York.
Are you hoping for a resurgence of interest in Shahn’s art?
Brown: Yes. It seems likely from the works assembled for this exhibition—in the New York venue at the Jewish Museum, plus the accompanying publication produced by Princeton University Press—that Shahn’s example will offer many aspects of artistic achievement and mastery. These will doubtless serve as significant substance for enlightenment and reflection by the art-loving public, by students, by creative practitioners, and by art historians of the Modern period.
In addition, the Jewish Museum recognizes that this retrospective will resonate with U.S. audiences at this particular moment in time and embraces the opportunity to continue a rich legacy of engagement with Shahn. Shahn’s work came into the collection in 1947, and in subsequent years the museum built a strong collection of his socially engaged secular and spiritual work. The Jewish Museum plays a key role in encouraging a resurgence of interest in Shahn. By focusing on the breathtaking range, diversity and power of Shahn’s art, this retrospective reveals that even the most political of his work was driven by the dictates of art. The Jewish Museum exhibition asserts that Shahn is one of the most consequential cultural figures in the New York art scene in the 20th century and one of the key Jewish immigrant artists in the history of modern art in New York and in the United States.
Ben Shahn, Liberation, 1945, gouache on board, 29 3⁄4 x 40 in. (75.6 x 101.4 cm.). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. James Thrall Soby Bequest, 1980. ©2025 Estate of Ben Shahn/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
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