June 2023

The MAC will loan a number of artworks to the exhibition Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (4 Oct 2023 - 26 Feb 2024) and curated by JMU Art History professor and Shahn scholar Laura Katzman. JMU is the second-largest institutional lender behind the Smithsonian Institution.

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity offers a fresh and wide-ranging account of the work of Ben Shahn (1898–1969), a Jewish immigrant from Russian-controlled Lithuania who became one of America’s most prominent and prolific 'social viewpoint' artists from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War.

Shahn’s guiding credo—formulated in the Cold War—asserted that nonconformity was the precondition for all significant art and great social change. Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity illuminates why the artist’s work should be seen as a series of 'nonconformities' driven by his steadfast dedication to social justice and humanistic values.