We recommend you escape the hustle and bustle of the holiday season by dropping by these exhibitions — each will encourage you to slow down and appreciate the world around you in its own way.

“Illustrators of Light” at the Norman Rockwell Museum runs through Jan. 4, 2026, but the Berkshire Museum’s “Call of the Sea” and “Homage to the Glacier” are only on view through Jan. 5, 2025 and are the last exhibits before the museum shuts down for renovations.

‘ILLUSTRATORS OF LIGHT’

Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge

413-931-2221, nrm.org

Electric light is something we take for granted.

But just over 100 years ago, half of all homes in the U.S. were still dependent on gas lights and candles.

In the 1920s, as the fledgling technology was introduced to more homes, Edison Mazda Lamps, a division of General Electric, began a marketing campaign exalting the warmth and impact of the incandescent light bulb.

Bruce Barton, of the New York ad agency Barton, Durstine & Osborn (now BBDO), recruited illustrators — Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Stanley Arthurs, Worth Brehm, Charles Chambers and a young Norman Rockwell — to emphasize the virtues of electric light.

The advertisements featured illustrations emphasizing the benefits of electric light — friends gathered around a piano, a young woman seeking the security of light in the middle of the night, healthy and happy families in well-lit living rooms or the negatives of not having it — a woman struggling to do kitchen chores by the light coming through a window, a young man studying by gas lamp.

“Illustrators of Light: The Edison Mazda Collection,” on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum through Jan. 4, 2026, is an exhibition of 16 original works, eight by Rockwell, on loan — for the first time — from GE Aerospace. The paintings have been on private display at Nela Park, GE Lighting’s headquarters in Cleveland. Original tear sheets from magazines and newspapers accompany the work.

Also on view: “Norman Rockwell: Home for the Holidays,” through Jan. 4, and “Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” through May 26.