Ben Shahn’s New York: The Photography of Modern Times

April 10 – June 10, 2001

This exhibition, organized by the Harvard University Art Museums, presented the photographic work of the celebrated American social realist artist Ben Shahn (1898–1969).

The exhibition explored the function and meaning of Shahn's experimental work in photography and his subsequent contribution to the emerging field of social documentary within the larger social and political climate of the 1930s and the Great Depression. Including over 150 photographs, ink drawings, easel paintings, mural studies and relevant ephemera, Ben Shahn's New York gave visitors the opportunity to view an important and little-examined body of Shahn's work, which was formative for the artist's photographic aesthetic and working process.