During my time away on vacation in July, I visited the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, MA. It contains the largest collection of Rockwell’s art and the museum property also includes his studio.
I confess my knowledge of Rockwell was very shallow − confined to hazy memories of sentimental illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post that I’d seen over the years. Most of the collection did indeed consist of those illustrations, and the sheer number and diversity of them was amazing. The museum gathered many of them chronologically, but also by themes. I particularly enjoyed the group of comedic works, such as the child discovering a Santa suit in a bureau the day after Christmas. (The Post had to run a note in that issue that Santa had simply left the suit to be dry cleaned!) I was interested also to see his series on the Four Freedoms, drawn from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address.
I learned that after Rockwell left the Post, he produced several paintings that were too controversial for his previous employer, especially on the topic of race in America. Look gave him a forum for works such as The Problem We All Live With, New Kids in the Neighborhood, and Murder in Mississippi. The Problem We All Live With has as its subject the young Ruby Bridges, and President Obama had the painting installed in the White House outside the Oval Office. I recommend looking up these works if you’ve never seen them, or haven’t seen them in a while.
Yet, perhaps because of the biblical theme, I end this meditation with Golden Rule, reproduced here and you can also find it in mosaic form at the United Nations. This painting was featured on the cover of Post in 1961 − and though it may seem a bit trite or sentimental, as a society we are clearly still wrestling with this concept in our current times. May it inspire us to be a little more faithful to Jesus’ famous teaching today!
Click on the image to go to WIkiArt’s Norman Rockwell List of Works.
