Meyer Schapiro, the Jewish Museum, and Living Artists: A Scholar’s Overlooked Activism

Abstract Meyer Schapiro was among a handful of New York’s most prominent Jewish thinkers writing about modern art during the post-Second World War period, just as the international center of new art had shifted there from Paris. Unlike his contemporaries Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, however, Schapiro is thought to have “seldom” or only “subliminally” addressed questions of Jewish identity, suggesting that he avoided or suppressed the matter. Yet his nearly four-decade-long relationship with the Jewish Museum of New York tells a different story. Schapiro’s unpublished correspondence, memoranda, and addresses reveal his role in transforming the Jewish Museum into a venue for avant-garde art and his urging Jewish acceptance of modern art, including works that were not visibly Jewish or that were created by non-Jews. These efforts reflect the ways his kinship with the Jewish community prompted his articulation of universal values of humanitarianism and social justice that he associated with Judaism, values that coincided with his social activism. The archival materials also show how Schapiro engaged with questions of Jewish identity as he drew on his scholarly knowledge and his affinity with the Jewish community to further the appreciation of modern art for the benefit of Jewish and non-Jewish artists and audiences.