The Promise and Perils of Public Art: Ben Shahn’s Murals on Social Security
Professor Laura Katzman explores Ben Shahn’s public art, with particular attention to his New Deal fresco cycle *The Meaning of Social Security*. Commissioned between 1940 and 1942 by the Public Works Agency’s Section of Fine Arts for Washington’s Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, the murals provide a case study in the tensions between government patronage, artistic independence, political activism, and social criticism.
Katzman’s lecture will be followed by a conversation with Jennifer Gibson, the former director of the U.S. General Services Administration’s Center for Fine Arts. The program will also consider the murals’ place within current debates over proposed sales of government buildings and major staffing reductions at the GSA, which oversees federally funded art in public buildings.
When: Thursday, December 3, 2026
Showtimes: 6:30–8 pm
Venue: Capital Jewish Museum, 575 3rd Street NW, Washington, DC
Tickets: Members: $5; General Admission: $10; Chai membership: $18
Featured speakers: Laura Katzman and Jennifer Gibson
Laura Katzman: Katzman is an art history professor at James Madison University and has served as the Terra Foundation Professor of American Art at the Free University Berlin. Her scholarship focuses on documentary photography in the United States and Puerto Rico. She has co-authored books including *Ben Shahn’s New York: The Photography of Modern Times*, *Re-viewing Documentary: The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam*, and *The Museum of the Old Colony: An Art Installation by Pablo Delano*. Her latest book, *Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity*, accompanied a retrospective she curated at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia in 2023–2024 and that was later adapted for New York’s Jewish Museum in 2025.
Jennifer Gibson: Gibson recently retired after serving as director of the GSA’s Center for Fine Arts, where she managed the agency’s Fine Arts Collection and Art in Architecture program. The collection contains more than 27,000 works dating from the 1850s to the present, installed in federal buildings, courthouses, and land ports of entry nationwide or loaned to public institutions. Gibson previously worked as an Art in Architecture project manager and led the development of the Center for Fine Arts. She now serves on the Federal Reserve Board Collections Panel. Before joining the GSA, she directed the visual arts program for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
Program format: Lecture followed by a conversation with Jennifer Gibson.
Featured artwork: Ben Shahn’s *The Meaning of Social Security*, including *Housing*, a 1940–42 fresco secco work.
Partners: Presented in collaboration with the DC Preservation League and *Moment* Magazine.
Run time: Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes.
Ages: Not specified.
Accessibility: Not specified.