Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Welders
Ben Shahn American, born Lithuania
Not on view
As the government’s focus shifted to defense efforts during World War II, it gradually disbanded WPA programs, officially closing the administration in 1943. Many former WPA artists went on to find employment through other public ventures. Shahn worked for the graphics division of the CIO-PAC—the country’s first political action committee, which had been established to sidestep new restrictions on the financial contributions unions could make to political campaigns. Welders, which invokes racial solidarity in the workforce, was reproduced as a poster that read, “for full employment after the war, register [to] vote.”
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