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Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene. By Diana L. Linden. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015. xi + 170 pp.
One does not typically think of U.S. government funding as being a major or direct source of support for significant works of American Jewish art and culture, especially before the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965. Among its other virtues, Diana Linden's Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals is a reminder of how a government agency's support could result in enduring works of art that deal squarely with Jewish and American issues, respecting both categories while synthesizing them.
Linden's study focuses on the murals that Shahn designed between 1936 and 1939 for The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, which commissioned major works of art under the New Deal. The first such mural, installed at the Jersey Homesteads where Shahn lived for much of his life, measures 12 by 15 feet and tells the story of Jews' immigration to America and industriousness as laborers and labor activists, including representations of Nazi anti-Semitism, Sacco and Vanzetti, Albert Einstein, and David Dubinsky, among others. The second, Resources of America, Shahn created with his companion Bernard Bryson for the Bronx Central Post Office, beginning in 1938. While...