The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened There Are No Words: Si Lewen's Parade, the first public exhibition of the complete 63-drawing cycle since the museum acquired it in 2024. On view in Gallery 690 at The Met Fifth Avenue from 1 October 2026 to 5 January 2027, the presentation gathers Lewen's epic sequence of charcoal, pencil and ink drawings, conceived around 1950 as a wordless novel on war, memory and the human condition. Lewen (1918–2016) was born in Poland to Jewish parents and raised in Germany before fleeing Nazi persecution with his family in 1933. He later served in the US Army as one of the Ritchie Boys, the specialised unit of German-speaking soldiers, and was present at Buchenwald shortly after its liberation in 1945. Those experiences shaped The Parade, which unfolds as a silent visual narrative moving from military pageantry through conflict and devastation to mourning. Met director Max Hollein described the cycle as a major acquisition that brings Lewen's work to wider recognition, noting its renewed urgency. Experienced in sequence rather than as isolated images, the drawings carry viewers through the cumulative force of their imagery — from military pageantry to conflict, devastation and mourning — asking them to confront the persistent cycles of violence that continue to shape the world. Lewen conceived the format as a wordless novel, insisting that "there are no words... just the picture itself is the narrative," and holding that the horrors of war ultimately defy language and description. The conviction gave the exhibition its title. Early in the work's life, through his gallerist Lotte Jacobi, Lewen sent a mock-up of The Parade to Albert Einstein, who replied that he found it very impressive from a purely artistic standpoint, adding that the times needed Lewen and his work. The museum acquired the complete set in 2024, and this is the first time all 63 sheets have been shown together publicly — a significant expansion of the museum's modern art narrative.