TJM - Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity
Fri, May 23
|The Jewish Museum
Explore Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity at the Jewish Museum NYC, May 23–Oct 12, 2025. A landmark retrospective of art, activism, and visual resistance.
Time & Location
May 23, 2025, 7:00 PM – Oct 12, 2025, 11:00 PM
The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave &, E 92nd St, New York, NY 10128, USA
About the event
The Jewish Museum presents Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity—the first U.S. retrospective in nearly 50 years dedicated to the visionary social realist artist and activist Ben Shahn (1898–1969). On view from May 23 to October 12, 2025, the exhibition offers a sweeping view of Shahn’s prolific career and unwavering commitment to truth-telling through art.
Featuring 175 works spanning the 1930s to the 1960s, including paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs, and political ephemera, this exhibition underscores Shahn’s role in chronicling defining moments from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War. With a distinctive visual language that evolved from realism to allegory and lyricism, Shahn tackled urgent themes: civil rights, labor struggles, anti-authoritarianism, and the fight for free expression.
The exhibition’s title is drawn from Shahn’s own credo—“nonconformity”—which he considered essential to both meaningful art and societal change. His later spiritual works also reflect his exploration of Jewish texts, Hebrew calligraphy, and the moral threads…