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Norman Rockwell Museum Publishes First Collections Catalogue: "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell"Posted on November, 29 2007STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — Make some room on your coffee table for a new, must-have book about American icon Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), one of the most popular and significant twentieth-century American artists of the past century. Just in time for the holidays, the Norman Rockwell Museum has published a fully-illustrated volume about its art and archives- a notable and singular collection that forms the most comprehensive Rockwell holdings in the world. The lavishly illustrated 272-page catalogue was written by Rockwell scholar Linda Szekely Pero, the longtime curator of the Museum's Norman Rockwell Collections, and offers the reader an insightful and fascinating analysis of Rockwell's art, life, and legendary career that spanned nearly seven decades- a legacy that continues to have a major impact on society, visual culture, and modern-day illustrators. The catalogue is written in an engaging, insider's point of view, and begins with Rockwell's early life, student years, and career in Manhattan, Mamaroneck, and New Rochelle, New York. In subsequent chapters, the author explores Rockwell's life and artworks when he lived in Arlington, Vermont, and later in Stockbridge, Mass., where he enjoyed the life of a famous working artist for his last 25 years. Of special interest to Rockwell aficionados will be the high-quality, full-size color reproductions of Rockwell's art, color-corrected to the Museum's original paintings and the first comprehensive catalogue of its collection. Readers will delight in an array of intriguing archival portraits of Rockwell throughout his life. Many of these images are being published for the first time, as they existed until now only as fragile negatives on acetate film in the Museum's archive. In 2005, the Museum launched an ambitious archival preservation project, ProjectNORMAN (New Media Online Rockwell Management Art and Archives Network) with more than $1 million in national and foundation funding to preserve its rare archival collection of more than 150,000 items from Rockwell's personal and public papers, art, and archives. This funding enabled the Museum to have its valuable collection of rare negatives restored and digitized by Chicago Albumen Works in Housatonic, Mass., one of the nation's foremost photographic preservation firms, and a stunning selection of these images appear in the catalogue. The book's final chapter illuminates in step-by-step detail the artist's working process in the creation of his 1965 painting "Murder in Mississippi." Research materials, handwritten notes, reference photographs, preliminary studies, the final painting, the published image in the magazine tear sheet, and portraits of the artist in the midst of creation, all make for a captivating and in-depth documentation of Rockwell's working process and methods. This section concludes with 28 pages of rarely or never-before-seen black-and-white photographs of Rockwell's studios from the Museum's comprehensive photographic collection. Photographs by Rockwell's assistants Gene Pelham, Louie Lamone, and Bill Scovill capture the artist and his models at work during the height of his career. Curator Pero has conducted extensive research of Rockwell's studios and this is the first publication of her original scholarship. The volume contains a foreword by Norman Rockwell Museum's Director and CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt, and an afterword by Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett. It was edited by Kimberly A. Rawson, Associate Director for Marketing and Communications, and Wren Bernstein. The book was designed by award-winning designer Rita Marshall of Lakeville, Conn., and was printed by Excelsior Printing Co., in North Adams, Mass. The catalogue was created to accompany the Museum's critically acclaimed traveling exhibition "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell," a five-year, ten-city traveling exhibition organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum which opened at the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, on November 10, 2007. Following Akron, the exhibition is scheduled to travel to the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; and Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR. Publication of the catalogue was made possible by generous funding by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Henry Luce Foundation and sponsorship by The Curtis Publishing Company and The Saturday Evening Post, the Norman Rockwell Estate Licensing Company, and the Stockman Family Foundation. "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell" is available through the Norman Rockwell Museum Store and may be ordered by calling 1-800-742-9450 or by visiting the Museum Store online at www.nrm.org. About the Author of "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell" Linda Szekely Pero is the curator of Norman Rockwell collections at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Her insightful catalogue entries reflect a deep and unrivaled understanding of Norman Rockwell's life, art and iconography, acquired through nearly 25 years of dedication and intensive study. In addition to curating numerous exhibitions from the Museum's art and archival collections, she has managed the Museum's Reference Center and the Norman Rockwell Archives since it opened to the public in 1993. Product Details for American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell |
