STOCKBRIDGE, MA– Norman Rockwell Museum presents Nora Krug: Belonging featuring art by the noted contemporary illustrator, who has assembled a list of prestigious accolades for her comics and graphic novels. On view from March 19 through June 19, 2023, this new exhibition will present more than 200 original drawings and paintings by Nora Krug, as well as the historical artifacts, letters, photographs, and personal items that inspired the artist’s work.

“We are honored to feature this important exhibition highlighting Nora Krug’s deeply felt visual narratives. Beautifully conceived, her provocative collaged pages bring together the threads of history, incorporating hand-drawn vignettes, historical photographs, and texts that bear witness to humanity’s stark challenges as experienced by individuals, communities, and nations.”    —   Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator

Exhibition Overview

Graphic novels are popular worldwide, using text and images to tell a narrative story while inviting readers to engage with subjects that may not have previously captured their attention. Meaningful launch pads for further discovery, they spark discussion and are read for enjoyment and utilized for research and discovery in a variety of educational settings. Krug’s fresh approach to visual storytelling provides unique opportunities to experience the power of published images to uncover impactful stories that enhance our understanding of history and contemporary events.

Krug’s graphic memoir, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home, and her most recent book publication, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, an illustrated edition of Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s text, will be the focus of the exhibition. Each book takes inspiration from the artist’s personal experiences as well as the events of history through engagement with deep topical research, museum artifacts, flea market finds, vintage photography, oral histories, and personal conversations, with the goal of trying to understand and depict the events of the past and share insights that are meaningful for our times.

Both graphic editions utilize a rich and surprising visual assemblage of color, imagery, and design, including collage elements like historical photographs—hand colored by the artist—and other printed materials that appear alongside her own drawings. Text often flows around images, moving the reader through each book’s narrative while calling attention to particular passages and ideas. In Belonging and On Tyranny, Krug’s images deepen the force of both her own and Synder’s text, compelling readers to stop, notice, and reflect upon the ideas and information presented, and to interact with each book as both a historical artifact and a work of art.

This exhibition also features a diverse selection of Krug’s graphic stories, including Diaries of War, the artist’s ongoing series of Op-Comics for the Los Angeles Times focusing on the war in Ukraine. Also on view is Kamikaze, highlighting the experiences of Kamikaze pilot Ena Takehiko, who survived his suicide mission twice; Fukutsu, about Japanese soldier Hiro Onoda, who went into hiding in the Philippine jungle at the close of World War II and remained there for twenty-nine years, believing that the war was still going on; No Man’s Land, focusing on American soldier Robert Jenkins, who after the Korean War, fled North across the demarcation line and was forced to remain in North Korea for thirty-nine years; and Quicksand, a visual narrative focusing on nineteenth-century Swiss explorer Isabelle Eberhardt who traveled the Algerian desert dressed as a man.

“We are honored to feature this important exhibition highlighting Nora Krug’s deeply felt visual narratives,” said Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator. “Beautifully conceived, her provocative collaged pages bring together the threads of history, incorporating hand-drawn vignettes, historical photographs, and texts that bear witness to humanity’s stark challenges as experienced by individuals, communities, and nations.”

“Images have political power, and they can change the way we think. Illustrating is also an act of witnessing: images compel us to notice and investigate, and at their best, they shed light on and at the same time critically confront the subjects they engage with.” —Nora Krug

Belonging

Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home traces the artist’s investigations into the hidden truths of her family’s wartime history in Nazi Germany. Though Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, the Second World War cast a shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. Perhaps not surprisingly, she heard little about her family’s experiences at the time; though all four grandparents lived through the war, it was never spoken of.

Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, and NPR, among others. Belonging, Scribner, 2018, foreign edition title Heimat), was the winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Society of Illustrators Silver Medal, the Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, and numerous others.

On Tyranny

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is Krug’s striking 2021 graphic novel inspired by renowned historian Timothy Snyder’s 2017 book of the same name. Snyder’s deep knowledge of the history of modern Europe prompted him to identify links between fascism, past and present, and to offer practical advice drawn from these connections for our times. Anchored largely in lessons from the Holocaust and Russian totalitarianism, the book is a readable and galvanizing volume made even more powerful through the integration of Krug’s innovative mixed-media illustrations. “Ultimately,” said Krug, “my goal was to create a series of images that would add a personal, poetic, and emotional dimension to the book and emphasize the urgency of Timothy’s call to action. Images have political power, and they can change the way we think. Illustrating is also an act of witnessing: images compel us to notice and investigate, and at their best, they shed light on and at the same time critically confront the subjects they engage with.”

“On Tyranny is a must read, a clear-eyed guidebook for anyone seeking to learn from history to help us understand the present. It is a manual for how to protect and preserve Democracy. The past teaches us that we, as individuals, must act to reaffirm and protect the freedoms and institutions that we collectively cherish. Listen, learn, be kind and courageous. This stunning new edition beautifully illustrated by Nora Krug makes the lessons jump off the page, into our hearts, filling us with the urgent imperative: act now, before it is too late.”
–  Ken Burns, filmmaker