"The Feathers of the Phoenix" is a sculpture created by America's Camp, a Berkshire-based summer camp for children who lost family and loved ones during September 11. The organization offered these children a chance to find solace through shared experience, art, fun activities, and community. The phoenix, along with other beautiful works, were featured in the exhibition "America's Camp: Images of Hope and Healing from the Children of 9/11," which was on view at Norman Rockwell Museum during the summer of 2007. Image ©America’s Camp. All rights reserved.

The end of the summer has brought much cause for reflection here at Norman Rockwell Museum— important milestones, the passing of former colleagues and friends, and devastating storms, which have forced our neighbors to rebuild and start again.

We would be remiss in not also reflecting on the tragic events that took place ten years ago, on  September 11, 2001. A decade later our nation still struggles to find peace and solace from the events that unfolded on that otherwise clear, late summer day.

Norman Rockwell Museum Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt wrote the following essay in the days following the event. These words, and comforting nature of Norman Rockwell’s paintings, seem as relevant now as they did ten years ago:

Norman Rockwell Offers Hope – 11 September 2001

Who among us will not remember where we were on the morning of 11 September?

As the monumental horror of the terrorist attacks unfolded, I was meeting official guests to tour the galleries of the Norman Rockwell Museum.  As we wrestled with our shock and dismay and acknowledged our awkwardness with forging on with the routine and mundane of our lives while tragedy rocked our world, we decided to continue with their scheduled visit to the Museum. We had to spend our hours somewhere – why not try to carry on.

Most of our early morning visitors to the museum were yet unaware of the plane crashes that had reduced to rubble the World Trade Center, and Pentagon, claiming thousands of lives. They walked around with their audio tour headsets, oblivious to the breaking newscasts, as they immersed themselves in Norman Rockwell’s world. The blue-sky, late summer day was soulfully beautiful. The pastoral beauty of the Berkshires was sublime. It was incomprehensible that a tragedy of this magnitude was happening in America. The experience of being surrounded by Norman Rockwell’s world at such a moment was surreal. I commented to my guests that Norman Rockwell’s America seemed to be disappearing forever at the very moment we were looking at it.

"Saying Grace," Norman Rockwell. 1951. Ken and Katherine Stuart Collection. ©1951 SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN

Our conversation began formally and professionally. As we discussed Norman Rockwell’s continuing appeal and the recent successes of the national tour of his paintings we harbored a sense that art and museums seemed non-essential in a universe that was being shattered. Images of the routines and pastimes of our daily lives: baseball, proms, barbershop quartets and movie actors, children playing, pastoral village scenes and carefree day-dreamers, somehow seemed frivolous weighed against the magnitude of sorrow that was descending on the world.

As the reports continued to come in, visitors still oblivious to the carnage, we found ourselves standing in front of Saying Grace, the respectful picture of the grandmother praying with her grandson in the train station diner. Hadn’t we just prayed quietly, our arms entwined in a prayer circle, in one corner of the galleries for the loss of lives and pain of loved ones, and for the wisdom of our leaders who would have to respond to such attacks? The poignancy and relevance of Norman Rockwell’s picture was not lost upon us. Suddenly Rockwell’s imagery seemed immediate and contemporary, timeless and universal, offering strength and resolve to continue to believe in goodness.

Around the corner we stopped to view the Golden Rule; “Do Unto Others as you Would have them Do Unto You,” reads the stenciled lettering on the painting of a pyramid of portraits of persons of every faith from around the world. A reminder that to inflict additional violence and pain acted out of our anger and rage would result only in continued terror and pain. Violence and revenge would never be a path to peace.

"Freedom from Fear," Norman Rockwell. 1943. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©1943 SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN

We arrived at The Four Freedoms, painted during World War II to try to make sense of the war that was being waged all over the world in defense of democracy and Freedom. Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear. Our safety and security had been violated. It seemed we no longer could live free from fear. These were the very principles of democracy upon which our nation was founded. The very philosophical foundations that we must not let be rocked, even as the foundations of our strongest economic and political symbols were being destroyed. We could choose to uphold these beliefs. We must choose to uphold them.