The Jewish Museum in New York's exhibition 'Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds' is missing its central artwork, Paul Klee's 'Angelus Novus' (1920). The original, owned by Walter Benjamin and normally housed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is absent due to "current conditions affecting international transport," a likely reference to the Israel-Hamas war. A reproduction stands in its place, alongside Benjamin's famous 'Angel of History' text, which interprets the angel as a figure witnessing the catastrophic pile-up of history.
The absence of the physical artwork underscores the ongoing geopolitical tensions that directly impact cultural exchange and museum loans. The exhibition uses Klee's 1930s work, created as he faced Nazi persecution, to explore themes of artistic freedom and resistance to authoritarianism. However, the show's heavy reliance on Benjamin's interpretation of 'Angelus Novus' to frame Klee's later politics has been critiqued as potentially conflating two distinct historical experiences—that of the non-Jewish Klee and the Jewish philosopher Benjamin, who died by suicide while fleeing the Nazis.