- Identification and Creation
-
- Object Number
- 1956.184.B
- People
-
Ben Shahn, American (Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania 1898 - 1969 New York, NY)
- Title
- Sacco and Vanzetti: Caption
- Other Titles
- Alternate Title: Caption/Inscription for Sacco and Vanzetti
- Classification
- Drawings
- Work Type
- drawing
- Date
- 1952
- Culture
- American
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/310450
- Physical Descriptions
-
- Medium
- Black ink on cream wove paper
- Dimensions
- 5.2 x 21.5 cm (2 1/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
- Provenance
- [Downtown Gallery, New York, New York], sold to Paul J. Sachs, Cambridge Massachusetts (L. 2091), gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1956.
- Acquisition and Rights
-
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Meta and Paul J. Sachs
- Copyright
- © Estate of Ben Shahn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Accession Year
- 1956
- Object Number
- 1956.184.B
- Division
- Modern and Contemporary Art
- Contact
- am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
- The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
- Descriptions
-
- Commentary
- Text reads: "If it had not been for these thing [sic], I might have live [sic] out my life talking / at street corners to scorning men. I might have die [sic], unmarked, unknown, a failure. / Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in / our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for joostice [sic], / for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words-- / our lives-- our pains nothing! The taking of our lives-- lives of a good / shoemaker and a poor fish peddler-- all! That last moment belongs / to us-- that agony is our triumph." / --Bartolomeo Vanzetti
- Publication History
-
Alejandro Anreus, Ben Shahn and The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, exh. cat., Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ, 2001), checklist no. 11, repr. p. 87 (color), p. 120, also fig. 31
Christof Decker, "A Unique Universalism: Ben Shahn and the Rhetoric of Visual Anecdotes", Anecdotal Anglia Book Series, 68; Modernity: Making and Unmaking History, De Gruyter (Berlin and Boston, 2020), 68
- Exhibition History
-
The Art of Ben Shahn, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 12/04/1956 - 01/19/1957
Ben Shahn: A Documentary Exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Boston, 04/10/1957 - 05/31/1957
20th Century Master Drawings, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 11/06/1963 - 01/05/1964; University of Minnesota Art Gallery, Minneapolis, 02/03/1964 - 03/15/1964; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/06/1964 - 05/24/1964
10th Annual Exhibition-- Ben Shahn, Temple Beth El, Portland, 05/01/1971 - 05/31/1971
American Art at Harvard, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/19/1972 - 06/18/1972
Politics as Catalyst for the Arts: The American Jewish Response, American Jewish Historical Society, Waltham, 02/24/1973 - 06/01/1973
Image of America in Caricature and Cartoon, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, 10/16/1975 - 12/14/1975; Fort Wayne Public Library, Fort Wayne, 02/02/1976 - 03/14/1976; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, 10/13/1976 - 11/21/1976
In Good Conscience: The Radical Tradition in 20th-Century American Illustration, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, 08/16/1992 - 09/27/1992; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, 10/17/1992 - 12/26/1992; Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, 01/10/1993 - 02/21/1993
Ben Shahn and The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, 09/12/2001 - 12/16/2001
- Related Works
-
This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu