Returning to Stockbridge following a six city tour that has taken Rockwell’s art and the work of other creators to New York, Detroit, Washington DC, Normandy, France, Houston, and Denver, Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom explores the indelible odyssey of the Four Freedoms, humanity’s greatest and sometimes most elusive ideals.
Price: $10 (Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A)
FREE (Live Web Stream)
Join exhibition curators James J. Kimble and Stephanie Haboush Plunkett for a virtual conversation about Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom. Freedom as an aspirational idea and its realities through American history will be discussed through the art and artifacts on view.
About Reservations:
The program will stream for free on the NRM website and the Museum’s YouTube Channel. Patrons who purchased the exclusive Q & A Zoom Session will be sent their unique Zoom link 1:30-2pm EST.
Price: $10 (Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A)
FREE (Live Web Stream)
Reservations for Zoom are now closed. You can watch this program for free by watching the live stream on NRM.org and the Museum's YouTube Channel. The Zoom and YouTube links, with instructions, will be emailed to participants approximately 4 hours prior to each program.
Join three Imagining Freedom catalogue authors - outstanding scholars who will bring little known aspects of the Four Freedoms and Rockwell’s famed paintings into view. What did these stand for in their time? How did they shape perception and generate support for the war effort? Who were they speaking to and who was left out? What do they mean to us today?
Commentators include:
Allida Black, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Millner Center/UVA and historian and advisor to Hillary Clinton (Eleanor Roosevelt & the Declaration of Human Rights: The Four Freedoms in Action);
D.B. Dowd, Professor of Art and American Culture Studies, Washington University in St. Louis (Essay title: Everyman, Meet Somebody: Characterization & Melodrama in Rockwell’s Four Freedoms);
James McCabe, Chief Collections Manager, The Henry Ford Museum (Essay title: Changing the Conversation in Detroit: Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms & the Four Freedoms War Bonds Show).
Quick Pics are short 5-minute videos that target students in grades K-6 and introduce you and your class to a images found in the Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom exhibition. Notice and wonder about the elements and details that go into each image. Learn some fun facts and participate in an activity inspired by each image.
A new image will be released each week, starting on November 9, 2020 and running through the conclusion of the exhibition on January 18, 2021.
Learn more about this activity, download accompanying talking points, and access other curriculum on the NRM Curriculum Lab.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020 (Veteran's Day) - 1pm
Price: Free (Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A - reservations required)
Join Kristopher Battles, Michael Fay, Victor Charles Juhasz, Elize McKelvey, and Steve Mumford, who will discuss their experiences as embedded illustrators across the branches of the armed forces and the power of art to tell personal stories. The history of artist’s working in the field, from the American Civil War to America’s more recent engagement in the Middle East, will be explored.
Food is fundamental to personal, family, community, national and global health. Food is love. Food is culture. Every human is in relationship with food. Cookbook author Alana Chernila and NYU Nutrition and Food Studies professor Amy Bentley have each, in their own way, committed to the study and celebration of food and culture. In their work, in different ways, each invites us to think about the decisions made and comfort created from our own kitchens through paving the way for planetary wellness. And then there is joy. How can intention and care for our food relationships bring joy? Join us for a wide ranging conversation which will leave you with a renewed curiosity to enjoy and celebrate food while also bringing intention and awareness to the choices made each day and how they impact the larger food system. Illustrator Whitney Sherman has made art for social good and humanistic causes throughout her career and will share how she sees visual imagery creating and shaping our attitudes toward food, health, and the environment.
We’ll share Rockwell food related images as well as Whitney Sherman’s illustrations to build awareness and connection to health and the environment. All participants will receive a selection of comforting Thanksgiving recipes.
Panelists:
Amy Bentley, Professor of Food Studies at New York University. She is a historian with interests in the social, historical, and cultural contexts of food, she is the author of Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (University of California Press, 2014), (James Beard Award finalist, and ASFS Best Book Award).
Whitney Sherman, Illustrator, Founding Director of the MFA Illustration Practice and Co-Director of Dolphin Press & Print at MICA. She is an associate editor and contributing writer to the History of Illustration and writer/editor of Playing with Sketches. Her award-winning illustrations have appeared in most major publications, and she is the creator of the Breast Cancer Research stamp, which has raised almost $90 million dollars for research; it is the first semi-postal and longest running stamp in the U.S. Postal Service’s history. Whitney has made art for social good and humanistic causes throughout her career.
Alana Chernila writes, cooks, teaches cooking and cheesemaking, and blogs at EatingFromTheGroundUp.com. She’s been a featured contributor for numerous publications, including Yankee Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Parents, Fine Cooking, and Food52.com. She is the author of three books: The Homemade Pantry:101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making, The Homemade Kitchen: Recipes for Cooking with Pleasure, which was nominated for an IACP award, and Eating From the Ground Up: Recipes for Simple, Perfect Vegetables.
Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A
Price: Members: Free | Not-Yet Members: Pay What You Can
Pixar Animation artist Tim Evatt will offer a glimpse into his career in animation and how he draws inspiration from the golden age illustrators, including Dean Cornwell, Mead Schaeffer, J.C Leyendecker, and Norman Rockwell. This exclusive event will demonstrate a compelling, behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar animated movies are made. Tim Evatt is a 13-year art design veteran serving as a set and character artist on many of Pixar’s more recent releases: Toy Story 3, Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Coco, The Incredibles 2 and the forthcoming 2020 release, Soul. He has also been involved in the production of a handful of animated Pixar shorts including: Toy Story Toons: Small Fry, Toy Story That Time Forgot, and was the production designer for the 2020 Oscar-nominated animated short Kitbull. He is currently the lead production designer on a major Pixar production that will be released in 2022.
Quick Pics are short 5-minute videos that target students in grades K-6 and introduce you and your class to a images found in the Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom exhibition. Notice and wonder about the elements and details that go into each image. Learn some fun facts and participate in an activity inspired by each image.
A new image will be released each week, starting on November 9, 2020 and running through the conclusion of the exhibition on January 18, 2021.
Learn more about this activity, download accompanying talking points, and access other curriculum on the NRM Curriculum Lab.
Virtual Program
Date and Time: December 29, 2020, 11 a.m. EST
Price: Members - FREE | Non-Members - Pay What You Choose
Meet artist and illustrator Jeff Mack for a reading of his new book, JUST A STORY, a related drawing activity, and conversation. What can happen when a boy happens upon a discarded book that transforms a library into an escalating series of near misses and close encounters? With an exuberant art style reminiscent of newspaper comic strips, Jeff Mack brings imagination to life in this riotous tale about the power of reading.
Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A
Price: Members: Free | Not-Yet Members: Pay What You Choose
ZOOM reservations are closed. Please watch the program on the Museum's YouTube Channel.
Bloodless wars for hearts and minds takes place on a battlefield of perception. The weaponry is paper. The ammunition are posters, magazines and printed graphic design. This talk will address the power of propaganda, the concerted effort to manipulate the conscious and subconscious through words and pictures – typography and illustration.
Steven Heller has written extensively on design/illustration and Fascism, notably The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today, a nuanced and comprehensive examination of the most powerful symbol ever created.
About the Symposium:
For designers, cartoonists, and illustrators, many questions arise when creating art that takes up socially significant, sometimes controversial themes. Some choose the D.I.Y. route, working independently with a free hand, without access to the large scale distribution that comes with a recognizable masthead. Others work with leading news organizations and magazines, agreeing to collaborate in exchange for access to audiences. Popular art has always involved such choices. What are the tradeoffs? What are the rewards?
This program is supported in part by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Media Sponsor:
This timely symposium will explore historical and contemporary notions of freedom as well as the role of illustration as a force in shaping public perception. How has published imagery affected decision-making, public policy, and cultural understanding? Prominent authors, illustrators, and scholars will offer perspectives. Share your observations by participating in all or some of these compelling conversations.
Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A
Price: Members: Free | Not-Yet Members: Pay What You Choose
Reservations for the Symposium are closed. You can watch the program live here or if you are having problems, you can watch it on the Museum's YouTube Channel.
Throughout history, illustrators and cartoonists have responded to the world’s challenges and upheavals with brilliance and ferocity. Navigating the technical and distributive realities of their times, artists create potent visual symbols and narratives that establish new visual metaphors and repurpose old ones, sometimes borrowing conventions from other media.
Panel 1. DIY Print Culture and Citizenship
Chair: Ryan Standfest, Editor and Publisher of Rotland Press
Panelists: Illustrators Sue Coe; Christopher Sperandio, Robert Sikoryak
Panel 2. Resistance and Mainstream Publishing: Media, Delivery, and Propaganda
Chairs: D.B. Dowd, Director, D.B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library at Washington University in St. Louis; Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator, Norman Rockwell Museum
Panelists: Illustrators Nora Krug, Anita Kunz, and Rudy Gutierrez
This program is supported in part by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Media Sponsor:
Virtual Family Program + Exclusive Q&A
Honor Martin Luther King Day by joining in a read aloud and conversation about the book Ruby Head High: Ruby Bridges’s First Day of School by Irene Cohen-Janca and illustrated by Marc Daniau. Based on the true story of Ruby Bridges, the first African American student to attend an all-white school in the segregated South, the story is also the subject of Norman Rockwell’s painting The Problem We All Live With which hung outside President Barack Obama’s Oval Office and is currently on view at the Museum. High school student, actress and singer Keely Rose O’Gorman will read.
Following the reading, artist Bria Goeller will join Keely in a conversation about The Problem We All Live With, her meme based on the painting which celebrates Kamala Harris’s groundbreaking Vice President elect status, and the role of imagery in shaping cultural narratives. Bria will also take questions from the audience, and especially from young people interested in her work.
Please submit questions to learn@nrm.org.
This program is supported in part by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Virtual Program + Exclusive Q&A
Price: Members: Free | Not-Yet Members: Pay What You Choose
Conscience is the individual’s most sacred right. How do multiple belief systems benefit a pluralistic society and why should freedom of religion be a fundamental human right? Join religious leaders from diverse faith traditions in a conversation about Freedom of Worship and its role in sustaining our democracy. Panelists will include: Rev. Valerie Bailey Fischer and Rev Sam Smith
This program is supported in part by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Virtual Program
Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Event
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 - 5 p.m.
Magazines are increasingly emerging as critical sites in developing a new understanding of the dynamic relationship between “fine” art and mass culture. Throughout the 20th century, a wide range of American periodicals commissioned artists to produce work for covers and feature stories, but many of these commissions have been left out of histories of modernism.
This session considers three case studies to convey the rich trajectory of art and magazines: Edward Hopper’s covers for the Wells Fargo Messenger, Mine Okubo’s drawings in Fortune magazine, and Saul Steinberg’s work for such publications as Life, Look, Sports Illustrated, and Time. The papers explore the origins of and motivations behind such commissions and analyzes the art as it was originally published in print, showing how advertisements, adjacent articles, and captions shaped the initial reception and understanding of the works.
Presenters and Topics:
Chair: Erika Doss - Professor of American Studies, University of Notre Dame; Rockwell Center Distinguished Fellow
Virtual Program - Free Event
Thursday, April 29, 2021 – 7 p.m.
Special guests will join us for a private preview evening for Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration.
We invite you to The Enchanted Gala: the annual fundraising party of the year. Join us on a memorable outdoor quest where you can step into the world of fantasy art and live exciting experiences, dreams and be part of fantastical worlds.
Call Bailey Girvan at 413-931-2264 for any questions.
Friday, June 18 from 7pm to 8:30 p.m.
Keynote:
Jesse Kowalski, Exhibition Curator
A History of Modern Fantasy Illustration
Saturday, June 19 from 10am to 12:30pm
Opening Remarks:
Sara Frazetta, Frazetta Girls
Artist Panel One: The Frazetta Legacy in Contemporary Fantasy Illustration: A Family of Artists
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Artist: Brom
One of the most highly regarded artists of his generation, Brom creates haunting imagery for the horror novels that he writes and illustrates.
Meet the international artists featured in the Fantasy Art exhibition on view at the Museum this summer. Join us in person, or online to hear from these world class illustrators. Learn about what inspires them, their current work, and future aspirations, followed by a Q&A.
The artists will stream in from their studios far and wide. Join in person, via a large digital screen, on the Museum’s scenic terrace; now offering beer, wine and a specialty cocktail, and ala carte menu; bring your friends! Enjoy online with our NRM global community; we’ll share a fantastical cocktail recipe to make.
Price:
Access to the online stream at the Museum is free with regular admission, cash bar.
Online participants:
Explore the magical grounds and discover original sculptures by regional contemporary artists inspired by the Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration exhibition. Meet the sculptors; find the fairies in the Yellowwood tree, and make a dragon egg. Vote on your favorite sculptures between 10a.m - 1 p.m. Stay for the awards ceremony including Best in Show, People’s Choice, and Kids Choice awards at 3:30 p.m. Visit our ice cream stand on the Terrace!
Free with Admission, Free for Members, children & teens.
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Artist: Thomas Blackshear
Over the past four decades, Blackshear has painted artworks for magazines, movie studios, and postage stamps, including a series he later released in a portfolio titled, The African American Tradition: Heroes of Our Heritages, which featured Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Ida B. Wells, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.
Meet the international artists featured in the Fantasy Art exhibition on view at the Museum this summer. Join us in person, or online to hear from these world class illustrators. Learn about what inspires them, their current work, and future aspirations, followed by a Q&A.
The artists will stream in from their studios far and wide. Join in person, via a large digital screen, on the Museum’s scenic terrace; now offering beer, wine and a specialty cocktail, and ala carte menu; bring your friends! Enjoy online with our NRM global community; we’ll share a fantastical cocktail recipe to make.
Price:
Access to the online stream at the Museum is free with regular admission, cash bar.
Online participants:
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Artist: Tyler Jacobson
Tyler Jacobson combines vivid colors with a captivating composition to emphasize the action-packed scenes in work he has created for role-playing games, periodicals, and advertisements.
Saturday, July 24 from 2-4 p.m.
Outside on the Museum Terrace
For drawing enthusiasts excited to explore process and technique for creating characters for stories with artist James Warhola. (Nephew of Andy Warhol, James has illustrated over two dozen children’s books.) Bring pencils and sketchbook.
Class limited to 20 people.
Price: One admission price for the entire Symposium.
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Illustrator: Scott Gustafson
In Gustafson’s delightful style of illustrating fairy tales, the characters come to life as they are imagined, in such classic stories as “Peter Pan,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Lion and the Mouse,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and many more.
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Artist: Anna Dittmann
As a rising young star in the field of fantasy illustration, Dittmann has taken advantage of changes in the way artists learn and produce their craft illustrating for a variety of media, including book covers, comic books, tattoos, magazines, and advertisements.
Meet the international illustrators featured in the Fantasy Art exhibition on view at the Museum this summer. Join us in person, or online to hear from these world class illustrators. Learn about what inspires them, their current work, and future aspirations, followed by a Q&A.
Illustrators will stream in from their studios far and wide. Join in person, via a large digital screen, on the Museum’s scenic terrace; now offering beer, wine and a specialty cocktail, and ala carte menu; bring your friends! Enjoy online with our NRM global community; we’ll share a fantastical cocktail recipe to make.
Price:
Access to the online stream at the Museum is free with regular admission, cash bar.
Online participants:
Saturday, August 7 from 1-4 p.m.
Outside on the Museum Terrace
Fantasy art is a blend of realism and imagination. In this intensive plein air workshop, Ruth Sanderson will demonstrate painting one of the many great trees on the Museum grounds, and incorporating a fantasy element into the painting—such as a tree spirit, fairies, or other imagined creatures, etc., and then instructing participants in creating their own oil painting. An accomplished, award winning artist, Sanderson is featured in the Fantasy exhibition.
Canvas and basic oil paint included; participants may bring favorite colors if desired. See program description online for full supply list.
Price:
Tuesday evenings in July and August at 5:30p.m.
Featured Illustrator: Bob Eggleton
One of the established superstars of “weird fantasy” artwork, Eggleton has illustrated and written numerous science fiction and fantasy books, and between 1994 and 2004 won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist eight times.
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.
