A painting of an art gallery with wood floors and pinkish walls and nine wood pedestals sporting stone statues, some missing appendages. On the far wall are two unframed works of art, one depicting a figure against a rural backdrop, the other, two figures in hats against a brick wall. On the left wall an apartment building is visible in what is likely an artwork hung with the canvas flush against the floor, but it might instead be an improbable passageway outside—there is no dimension to indicate one or the other, so it almost seems to be both.

Contemporary American Sculpture

1940

Ben Shahn (American, 1898–1969)

United States

In this work, Ben Shahn blended fact and fiction to offer a pointed commentary on the inclusions and exclusions of the art world. This enigmatic composition features eight known sculptures by leading artists of the day that were all displayed at a 1940 exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Three large, unframed painted images on the back walls of the gallery appear to be part of the show, but they were not actual paintings. Instead, they derive from Shahn’s photographs of working-class people around the United States, which he had taken while employed by the federal government as part of the New Deal, an economic program intended to revitalize the economy during the Great Depression. The invented works serve as portals to different worlds. The figures portrayed in them are positioned to see into the gallery but they are excluded from the “real” space of the museum and the modern art on view because of race, class, and geography.

Tempera on paper mounted to hardboard

Arts of the Americas