The Jewish Museum in New York launched its survey of Paul Klee’s late career on March 20 without the show’s centerpiece, as a wall label informed visitors that current conditions affecting international transport had temporarily delayed shipment of Angelus Novus from Jerusalem. An authorized facsimile now sits in a dedicated gallery space designed around the original work, which is too light-sensitive to remain on view for more than four weeks at a time. Museum director James S. Snyder said in an interview with The New York Times that the loan from the Israel Museum remains in effect and the drawing will arrive when conditions permit safe passage. The absence comes after US and Israeli forces began military operations against Iran at the end of February.
Paul Klee created Angelus Novus in 1920 as an oil transfer and watercolor on paper measuring about 12 by 9 inches during a period of experimentation that included puppet-like figures, according to the Israel Museum. German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin purchased the piece in Munich the following year and later described it in his 1940 essay Theses on the Philosophy of History as the angel of history staring at a growing pile of debris while a storm propels him backward into the future. After Benjamin entrusted the work to Georges Bataille before his suicide while fleeing Nazi-occupied France, it eventually passed to Gershom Scholem and was bequeathed to the Israel Museum in 1987. The drawing had never before been exhibited in New York.
The exhibition Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds assembles roughly 100 paintings and drawings that emphasize the artist’s final decade from 1930 until his death in 1940, a museum press release stated. During those years Klee confronted Nazi denunciation of his art as degenerate, dismissal from his teaching position in Düsseldorf and exile to his native Switzerland while battling scleroderma. Curator Mason Klein positions the works as acts of imaginative resistance against the rise of fascism in Europe, drawing on loans from the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Kunstmuseum Bern. A concurrent display in the museum’s renovated galleries explores Benjamin’s connection to the artist.
The war that began with joint US and Israeli bombardments of Iran on February 28 has caused as many as 9,000 deaths and more than 40,000 injuries across the Middle East.[[1]](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/paul-klee-israel-delayed-war-iran-new-york-show-1234785012/) This escalation has halted numerous art shipments and led the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to postpone two major exhibitions indefinitely, The Art Newspaper reported. Similar disruptions have affected cultural programming throughout the region as aviation and logistics networks remain constrained. Snyder noted that prudence required waiting for appropriate transport conditions.
Angelus Novus gained its mythic status through Benjamin’s interpretation, which transformed the straggly angel into a symbol of historical catastrophe and unceasing progress, a 2026 Jewish Museum assessment found. The philosopher hid the work in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France before his fatal attempt to cross into Spain in 1940. Scholem, the scholar of Jewish mysticism, later received it per Benjamin’s will and emphasized its personal significance to the writer. The exhibition includes a section spotlighting the angel motif that Klee revisited in his later years.
Organizers expect the original Angelus Novus to join the show once shipping resumes, allowing it to rotate with the facsimile for its limited display period. The survey remains on view through July 26 and has drawn attention for its focus on Klee’s response to political upheaval and personal hardship. Additional programming includes a lecture on the drawing’s history scheduled for June. The Israel Museum has declined to comment on specific shipping arrangements.
