Freedom, Fascists, and FDR: Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals and Jewish Identity in the American Scene
Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. By examining Shahn’s extant murals for the Jersey Homesteads, NJ, for a Post Office in Queens, NY, and also, a related proposal for the St. Louis Main Post Office, within the social and political context of the New Deal era, Diana Linden argues that Shahn went far beyond creating celebratory murals of his adopted nation. Instead, Shahn moved far to the Left, painting murals to agitate for social change on such issues as immigration, the rise of fascism, and Constitutional rights.
Dr. Diana L. Linden is a historian of American art who previously served as the visual essayist for City of Promises: The History of Jews in New York, 1654–Present, which was selected as the National Jewish Book Award’s Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award in 2013. Her other books include The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, which she co-edited, and numerous journal, catalog essays, and scholarly articles. Diana worked as a museum educator at the Williams College Museum of Art (where she cofounded the Museum Associates program) and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Copies of Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
Wine Reception: 6:30PM
Lecture: 7:00PM
Cost: Free for members, $25 for non-members (includes 1 glass of wine)
REGISTER HEREFees for this event will be billed to the member’s account.
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