New York Times article explores Freedom of Speech ‘meme’

July 9, 2024—Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech has taken on a new life online, as explored in a recent article in the New York Times.

“Across social media, his work ‘Freedom of Speech’ appears alongside all manner of strong opinions, from the highly serious to the absurd to the esoteric, enshrining itself into the lingua franca of the internet decades after its creator’s death,” the article notes. The painting began to show up in posts on Twitter/X in 2020.

The Times interviewed Norman Rockwell Museum Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett and Digital Innovation Officer Rich Bradway for the story. Plunkett noted that the painting has been widely used for eighty years to encapsulate and communicate the freedom it depicts. Freedom of Speech is one of a quartet of paintings Rockwell created to convey the meaning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” — the four universal freedoms Americans were urged to fight for during World War II.

All four original oil paintings in the Four Freedoms series are in the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum and are presently on display. The history and context of the paintings are the focus of the Museum’s in-depth virtual exhibition, Imagining Freedom, which includes contemporary interpretations of Rockwell’s work.

According to the Times story, the widespread use of the painting as a “meme” suggests its universality continues to resonate. “ Even if ‘Freedom of Speech’ is largely wielded with irony online, something of its original meaning seems to shine through,” the story notes.