Behind the scenes, our Creative Arts Archivist Max Goldberg has been busy this summer.
In August, Max spent five non-consecutive days at the Harvard Depository and went through all 270+ boxes in the Stephen Lee Taller/Ben Shahn Archive for the Fine Arts Library, which holds the collection of materials to the American artist Ben Shahn (1898–1969) compiled by Stephen Lee Taller.
Dr. Taller was a friend of Ezra Shahn, Ben's oldest son. The archive contains thousands of items related to the artist's work, including books written by and illustrated by Ben Shahn, magazines in which his work was featured, exhibition and auction sales catalogs, commercial work such as book jackets, record jackets, and advertisements, interview transcripts, and newspaper clippings.
As you can imagine from the sheer volume of this archive, it was a massive task to review the contents of all the boxes. Everything was cataloged at the item-level in a database by Dr. Taller, and Max estimates that there are approximately 10,000 items. We’re so grateful for all his hard work this summer. The first two photos in this post were taken by Max while he was working at the Harvard Depository, and the last image shows some examples from this archive.
Ben Shahn (1898–1969) was an American artist, best known for his works of social realism, his political activist work, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. Through his work, Shahn challenged the status quo in the society, focusing on themes related to modern urban life, organized labor, immigration, and injustice, among others.
Today is Ben Shahn’s birthday.
