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Gloria Stoll Karn: Pulp Romance
Opening Event (Tickets Required)
Saturday, February 10, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
6 p.m.: Commentary by Jean Torlidas Willow
Followed by a conversation with Gloria Stoll Karn moderated by Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator
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Celebrated for her artistic contributions to the pulp fiction industry during the 1940s, Gloria Stoll Karn (b. 1923) was one very few female illustrators working to create a steady stream of tantalizing images for the covers for popular romance and dime store magazines. This special highlights the years 1941 to 1949, when Stoll Karn’s illustrations were highly sought after by Popular Publications, one of the largest publishers of pulp magazines.The artist’s romance, western, and detective imagery appeared regularly in Black Mask, Dime Mystery, Detective Tales, New Detective, All-Story Love, New Love, Love Book, Love Short Stories, Love Novels, Romance, and Thrilling Love, as well Argosy. Join us to explore Stoll Karn’s prolific, decade-long career, and her unexpected journey in a world previously assigned to male artists. More than fifty original artworks, vintage publications, and a video profile of the artist will be on view. Meet the artist—now in her nineties, she will share reflections on her experiences in the field and her creative life in art.

Land Acknowledgement

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are learning, speaking and gathering on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican people, who are the indigenous peoples of this land on which the Norman Rockwell Museum was built. Despite tremendous hardship in being forced from here, today their community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all.

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