Ben Shahn Sites

The Farm Security Administration commissioned this mural in 1937-38 to commemorate the New Deal resettlement community of Jersey Homesteads, now called Roosevelt, N.J. The mural can still be seen in the Roosevelt Public School. "Ben Shahn's mural for the community center at Jersey Homesteads, Roosevelt, is a fresco - a painting done on fresh, moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water. It depicts the life of Jewish immigrants coming to America in the 1930s. Shahn was an American Social Realist painter. His paintings often focused specifically on social problems and the hardships of everyday life. His work was influenced by Diego Rivera,...

The Bronx General Post Office houses a set of 13 magnificent mural panels—collectively titled "Resources of America"— by Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn. A Lehman College Guide to Public Art in the Bronx has this to say about the Shahn murals: "In the fall of 1938 Ben Shahn, assisted by his wife Bernarda Bryson Shahn, began work on the cartoons for a major cycle of thirteen egg tempera on plaster frescos for the Bronx General Post Office. The project was created under the US Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, a new deal art program which produced public works in federal...

The Wilbur J. Cohen building, originally built for the Social Security Administration in 1938-1940, is home to a magnificent collection of social security themed artworks funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts.  The most spectacular of the artworks is a massive, multi-paneled, fresco mural by Lithuanian-born artist Ben Shahn, entitled "The Meaning of Social Security." Shahn's mural cycle covers both sides of the central corridor of the  building. On the east wall are three panels depicting the ills Social Security was meant to alleviate:  "Child Labor, Unemployment, and Old Age."  On the west well are scenes of a society cured of...

The Woodhaven Station post office in Jamaica, New York contains a 1941 Section of Fine Arts mural painted by Ben Shahn entitled “The First Amendment.”