What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine
June 8, 2024 through October 27, 2024
This exhibition explores the unforgettable art and satire of MAD, from its beginnings in 1952 as a popular humor comic book to its emergence as a beloved magazine that spoke truth to power and attracted generations of devoted readers through the decades. MAD’s influence and cultural impact will […]
BETWEEN WORLDS: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni
November 18, 2023 to May 27, 2024
Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni is the first major American retrospective dedicated to the art and design work of groundbreaking modernist designer and children’s book illustrator Leo Lionni (1910-1999). “Design is form,” the artist said, “Sometimes it is decorative form, and has no other function that […]
Opening June 11, 2022, Imprinted: Illustrating Race examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. More than 100 works of art and artifacts of widely circulated illustrated imagery will be on view, produced from the late eighteenth century to today, which have an impact on public perception about race in the United States. The exhibition will explore stereotypical racial representations that have been imprinted upon us through the mass publication of images. It culminates with the creative accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers who have shifted the cultural narrative through the creation of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all.
Nora Krug: Belonging
Award-winning artist Nora Krug’s powerful graphic memoir, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home, and her most recent book publication, an illustrated edition of Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, will be the focus of an exhibition at Norman Rockwell Museum from March 18 through June 18, 2023. Each book takes inspiration from the artist’s personal experiences as […]
Eloise and More: The Life and Art of Hilary Knight
Best known for his iconic illustrations of Eloise in the books by Kay Thompson, Hilary Knight has been creating art for seven decades. Influenced by his artistic parents, whose work will be on view in this exhibition, Knight’s first drawings were featured in 1952 in magazines such as Gourmet and Mademoiselle. Two years […]
STOCKBRIDGE, MA—Norman Rockwell Museum (NRM) announces the opening of a newly curated exhibition featuring rarely-seen Norman Rockwell drawings and preliminary studies from his six-decade career on view September 10, 2022, through January 7, 2023. The exhibition coincides with the release of Norman Rockwell: Drawings, 1911-1976, a new book by Abbeville Press written by Museum curators Stephanie Haboush Plunkett and Jesse Kowalski, available in early October.
Jan Brett: Stories Near and Far
With over forty million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost and most widely read author/illustrators for children. This lively exhibition explores the breadth of Brett’s art and the travel experiences that have inspired her many children’s books and characters. Favorite stories, from Gingerbread Friends, The Umbrella, and Honey…Honey to her most recent published […]
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Extra Good Boys and Girls (Santa on Ladder with Map), 1939. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, December 16, 1939. From the collection of A. Haigh Cundey; Huntington Hartford; Hirschl and Adler […]
Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. And perhaps, therefore, this is one function of the illustrator. He can show what has become so familiar that it is no longer noticed. The illustrator thus becomes a […]
Norman Rockwell in the 1960s
The Final Impossibility: Man’s Tracks on the Moon (Two Men on the Moon) Norman Rockwell. 1969. Story illustration for Look, December 30, 1969. Collection of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. © Norman Rockwell Family […]
Photography has been a benevolent tool for artists from Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas to David Hockney. And to illustrators, always on the lookout for better ways to meet deadlines, the camera has long been […]
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Rosie the Riveter, 1943. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943. Collection of Crystal Bridges Museum. ©SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights […]
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, commissioned illustrator Norman Rockwell to create scenes reflecting American family life for its national advertising campaign. These popular images appeared […]
These were classics. I read through the books, making notes of which scenes would make good pictures. Of course certain scenes—for instance, Tom whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence—were required.
—Norman Rockwell
In 1935, George Macy, […]
