Art Project and the Public Art Section of the Treasury Department and continued to work on his own easel paintings. In 1932, Shahn had his first critical and commercial success when his series The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in New York City. In 1942, Shahn began working for the Office of War Information (OWI), creating posters for the government’s anti-fascist propaganda campaign. However, OWI officials rejected most of his designs because they were considered too violent; he resigned in 1943. From 1944 to 1947, Shahn worked for the graphics division of the Congress of Industrial Organization’s Political Action Committee (CIO-PAC), and in 1948 he was a member of the graphic arts division on Henry Wallace’s Presidential campaign. During the Cold War, Shahn’s work became increasingly symbolic and allegorical, yet he continued to assert that art should be a means of political expression. Even though right-wing politicians attacked his work as communistic, by the late 1940s Shahn was one of the few American artists who could earn a living solely from painting. Despite his celebrity, he continued working as a graphic artist and serving the social and political causes he believed in. In 1947, Shahn had his first major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1954, MoMA organized a second exhibition for the American Pavillion at the 27th Venice Biennial. Shahn continued to paint, illustrate, teach and remain politically active until his death at the age of seventy-one. Today, Shahn’s work can be found in major museum collections throughout the United States and abroad and his work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications. Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum and Fine Arts Library houses the Stephen Lee Taller Ben Shahn Archive as well as a substantial collection of Shahn’s photographs.