Events are free of charge unless otherwise noted. For more information, call 212/998-6780.

In this three-part series of gallery talks, the curators will lead visitors through the exhibition, each focusing on a different aspect of Ben Shahn’s art and its era.

Ben Shahn and Modern Media  Wednesday, November 15, 6 pm
Jenna Webster, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, will consider how Shahn’s interest in popular imagery—including photography, newspapers, film, and comics—during the 1930s influenced his broader thinking and aesthetics.

Ben Shahn’s New York  Wednesday, December 6, 6 pm
Laura Katzman, Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, will focus on the New York neighborhoods where Shahn photographed during the 1930s, highlighting the ways he moved through the city with his small camera to document Manhattan’s diverse populations and to make studies for future work in other media.

Ben Shahn and the Public Use of Art  Wednesday, January 24, 6 pm
Deborah Martin Kao, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, will place Shahn’s photographs documenting the Artists’ Union protests and New York prisons in the context of his involvement in the radical artists’ movement and contemporary debates about the social use of public art.

Tuesday, November 21, 6 pm
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, 53 Washington Square South

A panel discussion of the cultural and political terrain that provided the context for the work of Ben Shahn and his contemporaries in the 1930s. While artists and intellectuals in general moved to the left in that era, they did not occupy a single political position, nor did their politics predict their formal artistic practices. The panelists will consider these issues as they examine what it meant to be an artist on the left in the 1930s. Moderated by Thomas Bender, New York University. Michael Denning, Professor of American Studies, Yale University "The Laboring of American Culture in New York;" Helen Shannon, Independent Scholar and Curator "Uptown–Downtown: African-American Artists and Politics in New York in the 1930s;" Michael Kammen, Professor of American History and Culture, Cornell University; "The Documentation of Life and Visual Expressions of Protest: Some Cultural Complexities of the 1930s" 

Cosponsored by the Project on Cities and Urban Knowledges, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University. For required reservations, call 212/998-3770.

Wednesday, November 29, 6:30 pm
Main Building, New York University, Room 408 (enter at 31 Washington Place)

Max Kozloff, author, critic, curator, and photographer, will examine Shahn's images alongside works by other photographers documenting New York street life.

Cosponsored by the Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Ben Shahn's Lower East Side  Sunday, November 19, 1 pm
Meet at Strauss Square (Essex and Canal Streets, at East Broadway)
Joyce Mendelsohn, New York architectural and social historian, will lead visitors in exploring the complex world of the Lower East Side in the 1930's. Participants will discover—on the streets where Ben Shahn photographed—how the rise of trade unionism and Socialism, the immigrant struggle to preserve Jewish identity in the New World, and the role of the Yiddish press intertwined to create this unique neighborhood of almost seventy years ago. Reservations required; see below.

Ben Shahn's Greenwich Village and Union Square  Sunday, December 3, 1 pm
Meets at the Washington Square Arch (Fifth Avenue at Washington Square North)
Led by Bruce Kayton, historian of New York labor and the working class, this tour traces the social history of the Greenwich Village and Union Square neighborhoods where Shahn photographed, encompassing the sites of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the Industrial Workers of the World, the first Labor Day parade, the socialist newspaper the New York Call, and the labor rallies at Union Square. Reservations required; see below.