Image: Norman Rockwell, ‘Liberty Bell (Celebration)’, 1976, cover illustration for American Artist, oil on canvas. Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1988.01. Licensed by the Norman Rockwell Family Agency. All rights reserved
‘American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell’ will remain on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through October 26, according to a museum newsletter issued August 25. The exhibition brings together works by Ben Shahn, Rockwell Kent, Ukrainian artist Irina Borisova and Native American artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.
The continuation notice gives no opening date, checklist or total number of works, but presents the exhibition as a central part of the museum’s current programme. The museum’s newsletter describes the selection as spanning a broad range of artists, from Shahn and Kent to Borisova and Quick-To-See Smith. It also reproduces a review comment from Don Stewart describing a “three-year search for images” that “took in all points of the compass.”
The exhibition’s title places the work of Norman Rockwell within a larger account of American visual culture, rather than treating his work in isolation. The source material does not specify the exhibition’s curatorial argument or the particular works included by each artist, so no further claims about its themes or interpretation can be made from the available information.
The Norman Rockwell Museum is located in Stockbridge, where its mailing address is listed as 9 Glendale Road. The museum’s current exhibitions also include ‘Norman Rockwell Paints the Presidents’ and ‘Norman Rockwell’s 323 Saturday Evening Post Covers’. Those presentations sit alongside ‘American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell’ in the museum’s exhibitions-on-view listing.
The museum is also presenting programming connected with the exhibition. A drawing workshop series, ‘Drawing American Stories: A Workshop Series for Beginners and Beyond’, was scheduled to conclude on August 26 with a class focused on selective drawing. Participants in the series work from close observation of artworks in the museum’s galleries. The programme is recommended for participants aged 16 and older.
A separate two-part event, ‘Ron Ramsay’s Berkshire Music Salon at NRM’, was scheduled for September 3 from 5:30 to 7pm. Planned in conjunction with ‘American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell’, the salon explores how artists and songwriters have shaped the American imagination over the last 250 years through storytelling, history and musical genres including patriotic songs, jazz, pop and Broadway. The exhibition itself continues through October 26.
