Michener Art Museum Presents 'Visual Literature' by Artist And Social Activist Bernarda Bryson-Shahn
January 5, 2005

DOYLESTOWN, PA -- The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown is proud to announce The Visual Literature of Bernarda Bryson-Shahn: Developing a Social Conscience, a selection of 1930s-era works on paper by one of America's most distinguished 20th century artists, who built a record of activism and creative production spanning eight decades. The exhibition is co-curated by Mary Veronica Sweeney, an artist and writer from New York City, and Peter Paone, artist and former apprentice to Ms. Shahn's late husband, the painter Ben Shahn. Sponsored by Mary Lou and Andrew Abruzzese and the Pineville Tavern, it will be on view in the Pfundt Gallery in Doylestown from January 29 through April 24, 2005.

Ms. Bryson-Shahn, who passed away in December 2004 at the age of 101, began her career as a writer, printmaker and illustrator, and was known in recent decades for her paintings. Born in Athens, Ohio in 1903, Ms. Shahn's family was deeply involved in journalism and social activism, both of which would inform her life and work.

Produced as part of the Works Progress Administration documentary project, the prints featured in this exhibition explore the difficult life of the American worker and farmer in the 1930s. "Her work is an eloquent reminder of a life of passion and commitment," Sweeney says, "and is also evidence of the value of art to teach us about the commonality of our experience."

A lifelong activist on behalf of the disenfranchised, Ms. Shahn described President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a philosophical humanist." Speaking with an interviewer for the Smithsonian Institute's Archives of American Art in 1983, she said: "In those days it was another time of people who were disinherited. That's what Roosevelt meant when he talked about the forgotten man. He provided for human beings something they could really believe in."

In 1933 she was working as a journalist and was sent to New York to interview the muralist Diego Rivera. There she met Ben Shahn, then Mr. Rivera's assistant, who would become her life companion. They married in 1969, shortly before Ben Shahn's death.

The pair drove across the U.S. in the mid-1930s, documenting rural life for the Resettlement.Administration. They also collaborated on two still-existent murals during the New Deal period: one in what is now an elementary school in Roosevelt, N.J. and the other in the Bronx General Post Office. As she told the Archives of American Art in the 1983 interview: "The things that we were doing in the New Deal - the things that we were doing were so exciting; they were inspiring, meaningful. It was probably the most thrilling time that I've ever gone through."

In midcareer her work focused mainly on illustration. Among the children's titles she wrote and illustrated were "The Zoo of Zeus" (1964) and "Gilgamesh" (1967). It was later in life, in the early 1970s following the death of her husband, that she took up painting steadily and became recognized as an artist in her own right.

Ms. Shahn's one-woman exhibitions included shows at Midtown Galleries in New York in 1983; at the Ben Shahn Galleries of William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, in 2002; and at the Susan Teller Gallery in Lower Manhattan last year in honor of her 100th birthday. Ms. Shahn's work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and other institutions.

Ms. Shahn passed away on December 12, 2004 at her home in Roosevelt, NJ.

The James A Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine Street, Doylestown, and at 500 Union Square Drive in New Hope. Doylestown gallery hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 - 4:30; Saturday, 10 - 5; Sunday, 12 - 5. (Open Wednesdays until 9 p.m. through October) Galleries are closed Monday. Admission: members and children under six free; general admission $6.50, student (with current ID) $4, senior citizens age 60 and older $6. Group tours: extension 131. More information available at 215-340-9800 or www.michenerartmuseum.org.