A major retrospective titled "Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity" opens this month at New York's Jewish Museum, honoring the American artist's lifelong activism. The exhibition includes 175 artworks and objects from the 1930s to the 1960s, organized into sections covering Shahn's Social Realism, New Deal-era work, responses to McCarthyism and the Atomic Age, and support for the civil rights movement. Co-curated by Laura Katzman and Stephen Brown, the show is adapted from a 2023 retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, which was a surprise hit.
This exhibition matters because it is Shahn's first retrospective in the United States in nearly 50 years, and the Jewish Museum was the venue for his last such show in 1976, making it a homecoming. Shahn's figurative, politically engaged work was often sidelined as the art world favored abstraction, Minimalism, and Pop, and many museums have been hesitant to highlight political artists. The show also required significant logistical effort, as many of Shahn's important works were missing or in private hands, with several rediscovered pieces included for the first time.