The Met opens “There Are No Words: Si Lewen’s Parade”: 63 drawings on war and memory, from October 1

NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) will open on October 1, 2026 the exhibition “There Are No Words: Si Lewen’s Parade,” as The Met announces in its official release. The exhibition brings 63 drawings by the Polish-born artist Si Lewen (1918–2016), on view in Gallery 690 of The Met Fifth Avenue through January 5, 2027.

This is the first public showing of the series since the museum acquired it in 2024. The drawings, created with charcoal, pencil and ink in the years after World War II, visually trace a journey from military pomp to conflict, destruction and lament — a powerful meditation on war, memory and the human condition.

Lewen’s life is itself the subject of the work. Born in Poland to Jewish parents and raised in Germany, he fled Nazi persecution in 1933 and emigrated to the United States. During the war he served in the U.S. Army as one of the so-called “Ritchie Boys,” saw action in Normandy and was present at the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation in 1945 — experiences that shaped “The Parade,” created around 1950.

The exhibition’s title comes from the artist’s own description, who said: “there are no words… just the picture itself is the narrative.” The exhibition’s curator is Maria Castro, while The Met’s director, Max Hollein, has called “The Parade” “an extraordinary achievement of 20th-century art, at once deeply personal and deeply charged.”

The exhibition is part of the museum’s modern and contemporary art program, as The Met prepares for the opening of the new Tang wing in 2030.