Giacomo Patri, “White Collar: A Novel in Linocuts” (San Francisco: Pisani Print & Pub. Co., 1939).

Stockbridge, MA, November 1, 2012—As part of its ongoing “New Perspectives on Illustration” lecture series, Norman Rockwell Museum will present “Graphic Consciousness: The Visual Culture and Institutions of the Industrial Labor Movement,” on Saturday, November 3, starting at 5:30 p.m. Presented through the Museum’s Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the lecture will be delivered by Dr. John Ott, Associate Professor of Art History at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia; who is one of four recipients of the Center’s 2012 Fellowship Awards.

“For a brief time in the 1940s, graphic artists and industrial labor leaders produced a visual culture that was affordable, accessible, collaborative, and, above all, responsive to a multiracial working-class audience,” notes Dr. Ott. “This talk urges art historians to look beyond conventional gallery works and toward more ephemeral visual cultures that have been marginalized by or excluded from the discipline,” including labor pamphlets and periodicals, billposters, comic books, filmstrips, and murals for union halls. The Rockwell Center lecture is free with Museum admission.

“New Perspectives on Illustration” is an ongoing series of lectures coordinated by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies. The series will highlight the latest scholarship relating to the art of illustration, delivered by the recipients of the Museum’s 2012 Rockwell Center Fellowships. This year’s fellowship recipients include: Ms. Bryna R. Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; Ms. Ranelle Lueth, a Ph.D. candidate in American Art History at the University of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa; Dr. John Ott, Associate Professor of Art History at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia; and Ms. Emily A. Schiller, a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania. Rockwell Center Fellowships are made possible, in part, with generous support from The Robert Lehman Foundation, and Edgar A. Thronson Foundation.

Upcoming lectures include: “Unsettled Masses: Transportation in American Art During The 1930s and 1940s” on Saturday, April 6; and “Bodies in Crisis: The Comic Grotesque in American Caricature of the 1930s” on Saturday, May 4. All talks begin at 5:30 p.m., and are free with Museum admission.