This installation will explore the nature of Rockwell’s client to artist negotiations with The Saturday Evening Post and a range of advertising entities and explore their influence both on the tenor and content of his images and on the readers who intersected with his published work. During the early and mid-twentieth century, Rockwell and other illustrators were expected to adhere to image parameters designed to sell magazines to middle class consumers and business people, who in the view of the publisher, epitomized American Exceptionalism and represented achievers in their quest for the American Dream.

For Rockwell’s advertising clients, content and messaging was heavily influenced by trends in consumerism, connections of consumerism to democratic ideals and personal advancement, and the science of advertising, coupled with the artist’s own observations of social trends. As a commercial illustrator, Rockwell was necessarily influenced by his clients, but his artistry, insights, and sensitive portrayals of humanity also profoundly influenced perceptions of American life.