The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell radio feature

Preserving a Rockwell Era

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B.S.O. Musicians Begin First-Ever
Relay Run from Boston to Tanglewood,
June 29 at 2 P.M., at Symphony Hall in Boston

150-Mile relay across the state begins at 2P.M. on June 29 at main entrance to Symphony Hall in Boston and ends at approximately 1:15 P.M. on June 30 at Tanglewood Main Gate in Lenox

Keith Lockhart to host start of relay leading brass fanfare and fires stater's pistol.

On June 29, at 2 p.m., at the entrance to Symphony Hall at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, BSO bassist Todd Seeber, along with 20 other musicians and staff members, as well as a life trustee, will begin a relay run, introduced by a brass fanfare and starter pistol, to the main gate of Tanglewood, to mark the opening of the 2009 season. The run will continue over 33 legs, each between 3.5 and 7 miles, and will arrive at the Tanglewood Main Gate at approximately 1:15 p.m. on June 30, in anticipation of the first BSO rehearsal at Tanglewood on July 1 and the opening night program on July 3, featuring an all-Tchaikovsky program led by BSO Music Director James Levine. Tanglewood is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra located in Lenox, MA. A group of 26 runners-fourteen Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops musicians, several of their family members, six staff members, and a life trustee-will run the 150 miles cross state relay. Each leg will be run by one to four participants. The average run pace will be 6 miles an hour or 10-minute miles. BSO bassist Todd Seeber and BSO violinist James Cooke, both longtime runners, conceived of the Run to Tanglewood.

In addition to Seeber and Cooke, BSO musicians participating in the run include principal violist Steven Ansell, associate principal violist Cathy Basrak, violist Rachel Fagerberg (along with her two children), oboist John Ferrillo, bassist Benjamin Levy, cellist Alex LeCarme, horn player Jonathan Menkis, bassoonist Richard Ranti (with his wife and two children), and principal horn James Sommerville.

The Lenox community will be invited to Tanglewood to cheer the runners on the final leg of the run from the Tanglewood Main Gate to the Tappan House on the Tanglewood grounds. For further information about the run or to sponsor a runner, visit tanglewood.org/relay.

WHAT: Run to Tanglewood 2009: BSO musicians, staff, and friends start 150-mile relay run from Symphony Hall, Boston to Tanglewood, Lenox.

WHEN: Monday, June 29, 2 p.m.: Keith Lockhart leads brad fanfare and launched run by shooting starter pistol. BSO bassist Todd Seeber leads musicians, staff, and friends on first leg of run.

WHERE: Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston (Main Entrance at Mass. Ave.)

PRESS CONTACTS:Bernadette Horgan (bhorgan@bso.org; 617-510-0597) and Kathleen Drohan (kdrohan@bso.org; 917-309-3100).

Fortieth Anniversary Summer!
Norman Rockwell Museum Celebrates
with Exciting Exhibitions and Events Throughout July

Norman Rockwell Museum celebrates its 40th anniversary summer with a lively line-up of exhibitions, programs, and events throughout July, including the opening of the Museum's two major summer shows: "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell," the Museum's major traveling retrospective, and "The Fantastical Faces of Peter Rockwell: A Sculptor's Retrospective," showcasing the artwork of Norman Rockwell's youngest son. Other highlights include the Museum's 40th anniversary celebration, reuniting many of the Museum's founders and friends; a family-friendly All-American Independence Day Festival, which coincides with the opening of "American Chronicles;" art workshops for children and adults; and a fresh season of the Museum's popular summer lecture and performance series.

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Norman Rockwell Museum Opens
Major Retrospective of Peter Rockwell’s Work
Noted Sculptor and Stone Carving Authority
Is Youngest Son of Norman Rockwell

A major retrospective of sculptor Peter Rockwell’s work opens on July 9 at Norman Rockwell Museum. The Fantastical Faces of Peter Rockwell: A Sculptor’s Retrospective showcases more than 40 years of the artist’s works in stone, bronze, and clay. Filled with a spirit of play and exuberance, the large and small pieces inspired by acrobats, gargoyles, monsters, and creatures in motion are unmistakably the work of a self-described "humorist as sculptor." The artist, who is the youngest son of Norman Rockwell, will be at the Museum on July 11 for "Peter Rockwell Day," a series of public events exploring his work. He and the extended Rockwell family will also be honored guests at the Museum’s 40th anniversary celebration on July 9.

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Norman Rockwell’s American Panorama,
From Childhood Innocence to Civil Rights Traumas

A major retrospective of Norman Rockwell’s work, covering the full sweep of the beloved artist and icon-maker’s 65-year career, opens on July 4 at Norman Rockwell Museum. American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell is a 10-city traveling exhibition organized by the Museum in response to nationwide demand for Rockwell’s art. The return of the exhibition to Stockbridge for the Museum’s 40th anniversary summer is a landmark occasion to see the iconic works that form the core of the Museum’s collections reunited in a single exhibition, interpreted and contextualized by new scholarship. After the summer, American Chronicles resumes its national tour, where it has drawn record-setting crowds, and continues traveling into 2013.

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Norman Rockwell Museum Celebrates
40th Anniversary with June and July Events

Norman Rockwell Museum kicks off the summer season with an engaging series of programs and events to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Highlights include a 40th anniversary party reuniting many of the Museum's founders and friends; the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of sculptor Peter Rockwell, youngest son of Norman Rockwell; summer vacation art workshops; and a fresh season of the Museum's popular summer lecture and performance series.

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Norman Rockwell Museum
Announces May Programs and Events

Norman Rockwell Museum kicks off an exciting month of programs and events with the reopening of Rockwell's Stockbridge studio during the first weekend in May. Freshly reinterpreted in honor of the Museum's 40th anniversary, the reinstalled studio takes visitors back in time to 1960 during a pivotal moment in Rockwell's life and career. In celebration of the reopening, all are invited to a free Community Day on Sunday, May 3, filled with multicultural fun for the whole family. Later in the month, on May 17, come back to the Museum to play ball with members of the touring U.S. Military All-Stars baseball team. Living history performances, a Models Day, drop-in art classes for families, an adult art workshop, and more offerings round out the month.

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New Joint Ticketing Program
combines MASS MoCA and Norman Rockwell Museum

MASS MoCA and Norman Rockwell Museum are now offering One Ticket-Two Views, an admission program which packages both museums for $25 (a $30 value if purchased separately). This new joint ticketing venture will offer museum patrons the opportunity to visit both art destinations at a discounted rate, and encourage visitors to the Berkshires to experience the wide range of visual and performing arts available in the region. Visitors have two weeks to use joint tickets purchased at either site.

With the opening of Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective at MASS MoCA, patrons can compare and contrast two great American artists in LeWitt and Norman Rockwell as well as enjoy the changing exhibitions in both museums. According to art and culture critic Dave Hickey, "[Norman] Rockwell taught me how to remember. I clung to the ordinary eccentricity, the clothes, the good-heartedness, the names of things, the comic incongruities, and the oddities of arrangement and light." Both Rockwell and LeWitt are distinctly American, and their contrasting techniques, subjects and completed works offer something for everyone to both learn from and enjoy. The New York Times says of Sol LeWitt’s art, “[his] deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art.”

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Norman Rockwell Museum
Announces April Programs and Events

Norman Rockwell Museum offers an exciting month of programs for visitors of different ages and interests. From April 18 through 25, the Museum will offer school vacation week drop-in art classes, exploring watercolor painting and paper collage techniques. For adults, the Museum will team up with IS183 Art School on two Sundays, April 26 and May 3, to present an intense two-day painting workshop. And on Wednesday, April 22, the Museum will introduce a new ongoing program called "In Rockwell's World," featuring stories from those who knew the illustrator during his years in Stockbridge.

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A Day in the Life: Norman Rockwell's Stockbridge Studio
Intimate View of the Artist's Working Studio Brought to Life Through Ongoing, Decade-Long Archival and Digitization Project

The studio that Norman Rockwell used during the last 21 years of his life and the site where he created some of his most enduring paintings will be reinstalled this spring. The reinstallation is the first exact recreation of a particular moment in time in Norman Rockwell's Stockbridge studio, and is a centerpiece of Norman Rockwell Museum's 40th anniversary.

The studio reopens on May 2 with "A Day in the Life: Norman Rockwell's Stockbridge Studio," an installation that recreates, detail by detail, the interior of the artist's space as it was in 1960 when Rockwell was working on his iconic painting, "Golden Rule." Rockwell described the building as "my best studio yet." It came to include storage for his supplies and art, as well as a darkroom where the photographs that served as references for his paintings were sometimes developed. An ever-changing environment, the studio was filled with reproductions of other artists' works, Rockwell's own art and mementos from his travels that often informed and inspired paintings he was working on.

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Norman Rockwell Museum
Announces March Programs and Events

Norman Rockwell Museum offers an exciting month of programs and exhibitions for families, artists, and art lovers. On March 14, the Museum takes part in the Berkshire-wide "Women in the Arts Festival," with a special program on fantasy art titled "Flights of Fantasy: Women, Myth, and Image." This month is also the last chance for visitors to take advantage of the Museum's popular Free Tuesdays program. Free admission to the Museum continues each Tuesday this month, wrapping up on Tuesday, March 31. On Tuesday, March 10, visitors can enjoy both free admission and a free performance by musician JoAnne Spies.

This month, the Museum also officially launches its 40th anniversary. On February 3, following Rockwell's birthday festivities, the Museum will kick off its 40th anniversary year with a season preview and announcement event from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Museum, to which press and community members are invited.

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Artists in Their Studios
Captures Major American Artists at Work

Intimate Perspectives on a Century of Painters,
Including Sargent, Marsh, Wyeth, Rothko, Pollock, and Warhol

Exhibition Complements May 2009 Reopening of
Norman Rockwell’s Reinstalled Stockbridge Studio

The interplay between artists and their studios will be the subject of a major exhibition opening this winter at Norman Rockwell Museum. On view from February 7 through June 7, 2009, Artists in Their Studios will present a behind-the-scenes view into the lives of over 75 noted American artists through hundreds of rarely exhibited photographs and primary source materials from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

With over a century of artists represented, from N.C. Wyeth to Willem de Kooning, Artists in Their Studios spans the sumptuously furnished salons of the late-19th century to the austere work rooms of the present day. The exhibition explores how studio spaces reflect—or in some cases belie—the personalities and aesthetic sensibilities of the artists who inhabit them. Alongside Artists in Their Studios, the Museum will curate an intimate installation of photographs showing Rockwell’s studios throughout the artist’s life.

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Annual Berkshire County High School Art Show
Opens February 7 at Norman Rockwell Museum

The Annual Berkshire County High School Art Show returns for its 23rd year to Norman Rockwell Museum. The show, generously sponsored again this year by the Legacy Banks Foundation, opens on Saturday, February 7, with a special reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Enjoy an afternoon in celebration of the talented young artists from Berkshire County high schools. The opening event will include refreshments, the chance to meet with the artists, and a performance by students from the Berkshire Music School. The exhibition will remain on view through March 8, 2009.

"The entries in this year's High School Art Show are outstanding in so many different ways," said Thomas Daly, curator of education at Norman Rockwell Museum. "This show really gives us a chance to see what high school students are thinking about and what's going on in their work. We might also have a chance to see what is in store for these students' future."

The 23rd Annual High School Art Show showcases the work of 132 students in grades 9 through 12 from schools throughout Berkshire County. Students submit original works to the yearly exhibition in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, and sculpture. The young artists learn how to prepare their work for a gallery show, acquire a personal understanding of the exhibition process, and have the exciting opportunity to exhibit their work in a professional museum setting. Admission to the High School Art Show is free for all Berkshire County high school students and their families and teachers, and for others with regular Museum admission.

A generous grant from the Legacy Banks Foundation sponsors the planning, coordination, installation, and construction of the exhibition, and related publicity.

Schools participating in the 23rd Annual Berkshire County High School Art Show include: BArT Charter School, Berkshire School, Drury High School, John Dewey Academy, Lee Middle and High School, Lenox Memorial High School, Miss Hall's School, Monument Mountain Regional High School, Mount Everett High School, Mount Greylock Regional High School, Pittsfield High School, St. Joseph Central High School, Taconic High School, and Wahconah Regional High School.

Norman Rockwell Museum Launches Major Programs,
Brings Rockwell’s Legacy to Expanding Audiences
in 40th Anniversary Year

First National Research Institute Dedicated to Illustration Art Established

Public Phase of Comprehensive Campaign Announced

Reinstallation of Rockwell Studio Illuminates Artist’s Creative Process

Norman Rockwell Museum today announced its 40th anniversary year of exhibitions, programs, and events, as well as the founding of a major new initiative in illustration art and the launch of the public phase of its comprehensive fundraising campaign.

Building on 40 years as both a regional museum and national resource, Norman Rockwell Museum is bringing the art of illustration to more people than ever in 2009. The Museum will present its 100th exhibition and welcome its five millionth visitor to Stockbridge this year. During 2009, the Museum will host five exhibitions and will travel seven shows organized in Stockbridge to museums in 10 states. Norman Rockwell Museum will go online with a significant portion of its vast archives this fall, making a “first wave” of 40,000 archival objects accessible to audiences worldwide via the Web as part of an ongoing digital publishing project known as ProjectNORMAN.

Also announced today is the formation of the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies (RCAVS), the nation’s first research institute devoted to the art of illustration. In development since 2003, RCAVS builds on Norman Rockwell Museum’s extensive work in the field of illustration art and ties together new initiatives and existing programs such as ProjectNORMAN. See separate release

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Norman Rockwell Museum Announces
Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies

40th Anniversary Initiative Builds on Museum’s Position as Authority on Rockwell and Illustration to Create First Institute Dedicated to the Study of Illustration Art

Joyce Schiller Named Inaugural Curator

Museum Launches Public Phase of
Comprehensive Campaign with Seventy-Five Percent of Total Goal Raised

Norman Rockwell Museum today announced the establishment of the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the nation’s first research institute devoted to the field of American illustration art.

The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies (RCAVS) will bring new scholarly attention—and resources—to the art of illustration, a hugely influential aspect of American visual culture that is only now being studied and appreciated. Through creating new online research tools and collections access, supporting scholarship, and spurring the collection and preservation of important artworks, RCAVS will establish a context for understanding the role of illustration art in shaping and reflecting American culture.

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Norman Rockwell Museum Launches Public Phase of Comprehensive Campaign during 40th Anniversary Year with Three-Fourths of Goal Raised

Gifts of Art Form Basis for New Illustration Art Collection

Norman Rockwell Museum today announced the launch of the public phase of its comprehensive fundraising campaign, Sharing Rockwell’s Legacy. The national campaign, which has been underway since 2006, seeks to secure the Museum’s future as the steward of the art and ideals of Norman Rockwell in the field of illustration. Norman Rockwell Museum recently became the first museum to receive the National Humanities Medal, America’s highest honor in the humanities, for its excellence and innovation in this stewardship role.

Over the past three years, Sharing Rockwell’s Legacy has made possible projects and programs vital to the Museum’s future. These include the planning and launch of the Museum’s significant new initiative in the field of illustration art, the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies (RCAVS), also announced today, and ProjectNORMAN, the Museum’s 10-year collections digitization and online access project, which will go live on the Web in November 2009 under the auspices of RCAVS. ProjectNORMAN has received $1.5 million in donations to-date, including major gifts from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Save America’s Treasures, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Stockbridge Community Preservation.

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