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).

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 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.

Special guests will join us for a private preview evening for Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration.

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.