Imprinted: Illustrating Race examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. Over 300 artworks and objects on view of widely circulated illustrated imagery will be on view, produced from the late eighteenth century to today, which have an impact on public perception about race in the United States. The exhibition will explore stereotypical racial representations that have been imprinted upon us through the mass publication of images. It culminates with the creative accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers who have shifted the cultural narrative through the creation of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all.

Co-curated by University of Delaware Professor of Visual Communications, and Interim Director of the MFA in Illustration Practice program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), guest Curator Robyn Phillips Pendleton, who has written and spoken widely on the theme of this exhibition, and by noted scholar in American illustration, the Museum’s Deputy Director/Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett. They are joined by a distinguished National Exhibition Advisory Committee of 10 academic scholars, curators, and artists with expertise related to the focus of the exhibition’s thesis.

Loveis Wise, 1995 — , Nurture (detail), 2018.

Loveis Wise (1995 — )
Nurture [detail], 2018.
Cover illustration for The New Yorker, June 2018.
© 2018 Loveis Wise. All rights reserved.

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Host this Exhibition!

This exhibition is available to be hosted at your venue.  For more information, please contact travelingexhibitions@nrm.org. Laurie Tang: 413-931-2232

“Norman Rockwell Museum is dedicated to the art of illustration and to examining the influence of widely published imagery on society,” said Stephanie Haboush Plunkett. “Imprinted: Illustrating Race presents a revealing analytical study of challenging historical visual material that invites consideration of the ways in which what we see affects what we believe about humanity and our world. I am honored to work with Robyn Phillips Pendleton and our accomplished panel of advisors to bring this important subject to light.”

Illustration has been at the forefront of defining events in the United States from the Civil War and Reconstruction Era to the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s and today. Organized in three sections the exhibition, focuses on artwork commissioned by publishers and advertisers and created by illustrators, engravers, and printers, as well as the work of contemporary creators that will spark dialogue and raise awareness about the role of published art in reflecting and shaping beliefs and attitudes about race.

“I am thrilled to be working with Norman Rockwell Museum and a part of this groundbreaking illustration exhibition that highlights the perception and advancement of race through artwork. This exhibition promotes new ideas through imagery that celebrates, normalizes, and facilitates inter-cultural tolerance” says Robyn Phillips Pendleton.

EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION

  1. Historical Perspectives
    Hammatt Billings, (1818-1874), Little Eva Reading to Uncle Tom in the Arbor, 1852.

    Hammatt Billings, (1818-1874),
    Little Eva Reading to Uncle Tom in the Arbor, 1852.
    Illustration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe [First Edition: Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1852].
    University of Delaware Library. University of Delaware Special Collections and Museums.

    The opening segment of the exhibition will examine the history of racial stereotypes in illustration, sanctioned in publishing from the 18th to the early 20th century. The roots of damaging and provocative representations of race through the construction of cultural identities of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and immigrants from across the world, and the role of illustration as a powerful vehicle in the process will be explored.Illustrations from Harper’s Weekly, Puck Magazine, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, The Saturday Evening Post and a range of advertising campaigns, including the Cream of Wheat and Aunt Jemima brands, depict prevalent demeaning portrayals of people of color before, during, and after the Civil War. Illustrations by Hammatt Billings, George Cruikshank and others for such literary works as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published over time, show shifts in perspective and character design, also seen in the propagation of theater posters, advertising, and magazine illustrations relating to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous narrative. White people produced these materials for white consumers, who were the perceived audience for publications and products.This section of the exhibition will also feature materials created to combat negative perceptions. William J. Wilson published the “Afric-American Picture Gallery” under the name of Ethiop in the Anglo-African Magazine. In 1853, Frederick Douglass’ Paper printed a letter from Wilson where he discussed his recent trips to art galleries in New York City. He commented on the lack of “distinguished black” images and figures in the galleries, concluding, “we must begin to tell our own story, write our own lecture, paint our own picture, chisel our own bust.”
  2. Illustrating Change: The Harlem Renaissance through World War II
    Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) - Fronticepiece, 1929

    Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998)
    Fronticepiece, 1929
    Illustration for The Picture Poetry Book, 1929
    Mazza Museum Collection

    The exhibition moves forward to explore the artistic outpouring of multi-faceted cultural activities by African Americans in reaction to oppressive racial profiling and Jim Crow laws. The Harlem Renaissance (also known as the New Negro Movement) inspired pride in Black life and identity following World War I through the Great Depression. Artists associated with the movement conveyed a rising consciousness of inequality and discrimination, and an interest in the rapidly changing modern world, many experiencing a freedom of expression through the arts for the first time.This segment of the exhibition will focus on the significant contributions of illustrators of the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, as well as new African American cultural expressions across urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States, affected by the Great Migration, which brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston. The Harlem Renaissance ushered in a new focus on African American arts andmade unprecedented opportunities available for female artists, and the new African American magazines of the time were the best prospects for women to publish their work. The two largest national journals that employed African American women as freelance illustrators were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s magazine, The Crisis that founding editor W. E. B. Du Bois launched in 1910, and the Urban League’s Opportunity Magazine, begun in 1923.

    Works by Charles Alston, Gwendolyn Bennett, E. Sims Campbell, Aaron Douglas, James Lesesne Wells, Norman Lewis, Lois Mailou Jones, Archibald Motley, Jr., and Laura Wheeler Waring, among others, are featured and compared with illustrations created for white readers of The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, and other popular 20th-century publications.
  3. Illustration, Race, and Responsibility: 1950s to Now
    Harvey Dinnerstein (b. 1928), Mrs. Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1965.

    Harvey Dinnerstein (b. 1928),
    Mrs. Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1965.
    Delaware Art Museum Collection, V. du Pont Acquisition Fund, 1993.
    ©Harvey Dinnerstein. All rights reserved.

    Illustration, Race, and Responsibility: 1950s to Now will explore activism through art from the Civil Rights movements of the mid-20th century to the racial unrest of present day. Recognizing that illustration and mass media had established divisive narratives – illustrators, editors, publishers, and advertisers became more aware of their responsibility to feature equitable and authentic representations of race.This exhibition section highlights the art of noted illustrators who have worked proactively to create respectful and inclusive images to convey a sense of hope and cultural pride for a new generation from the Civil Rights Movement and moving forward to the newspaper, periodical, picture book, and digital images of today.

    Posters, magazine, and book illustrations by Harvey Dinnerstein, Emory Douglas, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Jacob Lawrence, Tyrus Wong, and many contemporary practitioners, including Alex Bostick, Rudy Gutierriez, Hollis King, Kadir Nelson, Jerry Pinkney, James Ransome, Faith Ringgold, Shadra Strickland, and Loveis Wise, will be featured.

Exhibition catalogue featuring essays by noted scholars and curators and designed by Hollis King.

This publication is supported by Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund

FURTHERMORE grants in publishing

Robyn Phillips Pendleton and Stephanie Haboush Plunkett will present an exhibition overview.
Additional chapters and authors include:
Michele Bogart, Ph.D., Heather Campbell Coyle, Ph.D., Karen Fang, Ph.D., William Foster, III, Colette Gaiter, Nancy Goldstein, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ph.D., Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D., Andrea Davis Pinkney, Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Details for advance orders will be posted in January 2022.

Essays Include:

Michele Bogart, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, SUNY Stonybrook
Artwork and the Cream of Wheat Campaign

Heather Campbell Coyle, Ph.D.
Chief Curator and Curator of American Art, Delaware Art Museum
Historical Fictions: African Americans within Historical Narratives, 1880s to 1920s

Karen Fang, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of English, University of Houston
Asian Americans in Published Imagery: The Nineteenth Century Chinese Exclusion and World War II

William Foster, III
Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Naugatuck Valley Community College
Independent Black Comic Book Artists and Publishers

Colette Gaiter
Professor, Departments of Africana Studies and Art & Design, University of Delaware
Imagery and the Black Panther Party

Nancy Goldstein
Independent Author and Historian
Into the Light: Illuminating the Work and Life of Cartoonist Jackie Ormes, 1911-1985

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of English, Pomona College
Illustration, Publishing, and the Female Artists of the Harlem Renaissance Jazz Age

Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History, University of Cincinnati
Are They Equal in the Eyes of the Law?: African American Soldiers in World War I Illustrated Sheet Music

Andrea Davis Pinkney
New York Times bestselling author of Martin Rising: Requiem for a King, and Regina Medalist
Embossed, Erased, Embraced: How Racial Representation Impacts the Minds and Hearts of Children

Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Curator, Museum of African American Culture and History, Smithsonian Institution
African American Artists in Contemporary Illustration

Published interviews with contemporary illustrators such as Hollis King, Jerry Pinkney, James Ransome, and others who will discuss their art and experiences will also be included.

A virtual edition of the exhibition, discussion guide, and curriculum for grades 6-12 will also be available to provide broad public access and engagement. The exhibition will feature an audio/visual tour in multiple languages, interactive elements, and related virtual and on-site programs. National travel of this exhibition to additional venues in the future is being explored.

Curriculum Supported by:

TD Bank

Guest Curator

Robyn Phillips-PendletonGuest Curator Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, Professor of Visual Communications in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Delaware, Newark and Interim Director of the MFA in Illustration Practice program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), is a practicing illustrator, visual storyteller, designer, and educator. She has exhibited her work in national and international exhibitions, and she is also an artist for the United States Air Force Artist Program; her paintings documented the events following the earthquake in Haiti. Robyn has created illustrations for institutions of higher education, children’s CD covers, editorial magazines, picturebooks, and publishing companies. A member of the Norman Rockwell Museum National Advisory Board for Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms, which traveled internationally, she was also a juror for the exhibition’s contemporary component. She is a member of the Board of Directors of New York’s Society of Illustrators. Her research focuses on the history of illustration and the influence of published imagery on perceptions of race. Robyn’s essay, “Race, Perception, and Responsibility in Illustration,” appears in A Companion to Illustration (edited by Alan Male, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019). Homework for Breakfast is her most recent illustrated picture book. 

Norman Rockwell Museum Chief Curator/Deputy Director

StephanieStephanie Haboush Plunkett is the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum. She is the curator of many exhibitions relating to the art of illustration including Enduring Ideals: Rockwell Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms; Inventing America: Rockwell and Warhol; Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World; Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs; The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator; Ephemeral Beauty: Al Parker and the American Women’s Magazine: 1940-1960; LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel; and The Art of The New Yorker: Eighty Years in the Vanguard­, and has held positions at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and the Heckscher Museum of Art. She leads the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the first scholarly institute devoted to the study of illustration art. “The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada 1940-1970” in History of Illustration and Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artist School: Classic Techniques and Expert Tips from the Golden Age of Illustration is a recent publication.

Julien Allen
Rob Armstrong
Stanley Massey Arthurs
Rachelle Baker
Ernie Barnes
Romare Bearden
Joseph Becker
Chip Bellew
Gwendolyn Bennett
Hammatt Billings
Thomas Blackshear
Barry Blitt
Alex Bostic
Edward V. Brewer
Sheila Bridges
Theodore de Bry
Ashley Bryan
E. Simms Campbell
Milton Caniff
Robert Carter
Joe Cepada
Syracuse China
Miguel Covarrubias
R. Gregory Christie
Jerry Craft
Ernest Crichlow
G. Cruikshank
Currier & Ives
Louis Dalrymple
Felix Octavius Darley
Charles Clarence Dawson
Noa Denmon
Gayle “Asali” Dickson
Diane Dillon
Leo Dillon
Harvey Dinnerstein
Tad Dorgan
Aaron Douglas
Emory Douglas
Harvey Dunn
Jim “Seitu” Dyson
George Ellsbury
Sol Etinge
Tom Feelings
E.S. Fisher
Frank Livingston Fithian
Arthur Burdett Frost
John Gannam
Louis M. Glackens
Sydney B. Griffin
Rudy Gutierrez
Inez Hogan
Geoffrey Holder
Chris Hopkins
F.M. Howorth
Rea Irving
Lois Mailou Jones
Gary Kelley
Rockwell Kent
Hollis King
Keith Knight
Anita Kunz
Jacob Lawrence
Terri Lee
E.B. Lewis
F.X. Leyendecker
J.C. Leyendecker
Charles Lilly
Joe W. McGurk
Windsor McKay
Ahmed Samuel Milai
Wendell Minor
Guernsey Moore
Thomas Nast
Kadir Nelson
Rose O’Neill
C.F. Payne
E.H. Pfeiffer
John Hyde Phillips
Robyn Phillips-Pendleton
Brian Pinkney
Jerry Pinkney
Andrea Pippins
John S. Pughe
Howard Pyle
James Ransome
Faith Ringgold
Norman Rockwell
Alison Saar
Martha Sawyers
Mead Schaeffer
Ben Shahn
Burton Silverman
Albert Alexander Smith
Jesse Willcox Smith
Alice Barber Stephens
Shadra Strickland
Henry O. Tanner
Thomas Stanford Tousey
Ezra Tucker
Morrie Turner
Kara Walker
E.E. Walton
Larry Weekes
Loveis Wise
Charles C. White

A panel of academic and curatorial advisors made up of accomplished scholars, curators, and artists was assembled in April 2021. The advisory has worked with the curators to establish the thesis and framework of the exhibition and accompanying catalogue.

National advisors include: 

Michele H. Bogart, Ph.D.
Michele H. Bogart, Ph.D. was a former Professor of Art History and American visual culture studies at Stony Brook University, where she taught from 1982 to 2020. She is the author of Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930, recipient of the 1991 Charles C. Eldredge Prize; Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (1995); The Politics of Urban Beauty: New York and Its Art Commission (2006), and Sculpture in Gotham: Art and Urban Renewal in New York (2018). Bogart has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at the JFK Institut, Freie Universität von Berlin. From 1999 through 2003, she was Vice President of the Art Commission of the City of New York (renamed the Public Design Commission), the City’s design review agency, and serves on the PDC’s Conservation Advisory Group. From 2017 to 2019, Bogart was a member of the Rockwell Center Society of Fellows, a group of four academic scholars engaged in bringing fresh thinking and enhanced scholarship about published imagery. In 2020, she was awarded the Leon Levy Fellowship at the Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick. She is currently an advisor to the Museum’s Terra Foundation Collections Reinterpretation Project.

Heather Campbell Coyle, Ph.D.
Heather Campbell Coyle, Ph.D. is Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum. She pursued doctoral work in art history at the University of Delaware and her dissertation is titled, “Pranks, Performances and Parody in American Art Schools, 1890–1915.” Coyle has organized many exhibitions including Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York, for which she also supervised production of the educational website and catalogue for the project; Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered; and Gertrude Käsebier’s Photographs of the Eight: Portraits for Promotion. She is a Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Fellow and the editor of Fashion, Circus, Spectacle: Photographs by Scott Heiser. Coyle oversees a collection of American art and illustration spanning 1757 to 1960, and she is currently at work on installations focusing on Jazz Age illustration and on women illustrators.

Karen Fang, Ph.D
Karen Fang, Ph.D. is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston, where her research and teaching interests center upon surveillance, narrative, imperial and postcolonial culture, and comparative global modernities. As a scholar of literature as well as film, she is the author or editor of several studies on Hong Kong and Asian film that explore the intersection of eastern and western aesthetics. Karen is the author of Arresting Cinema: Surveillance in Hong Kong Film (Stanford University Press 2017), Surveillance in Asian Cinema: Under Eastern Eyes (Routledge, 2017). She also chairs a college initiative in Media and the Moving Image. A Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Fellow, Fang is conducting research for a book focusing on Chinese American artist and illustrator Tyrus Wong, who was instrumental in the production of the beloved Disney classic, Bambi.

William H. Foster III
William H. Foster III is an emeritus Professor of English at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Connecticut. His extensive knowledge of comics has lead him to work with CNN News and National Public Radio as an expert commentator; he has also been a consultant for the Words and Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art in Northampton, Massachusetts and for the Connecticut’s Historical Society on projects relating to African Americans in comics and books. In 2005, Foster compiled his research in Looking for a Face Like Mine, a book published by Fine Tooth Press. In 2007, he was a guest speaker for Central China Normal University’s International Symposium on Langston Hughes, and was featured in PBS’s 2013 documentary, Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, where he examined the political and social influence of some of his favorite characters. A collector as well, he has lectured internationally on the history of comics and representations of race.

Hollis King
Hollis King is former vice-president and creative director at the Verve Music Group, the largest jazz record label in the world, where he was responsible for art direction of all music packaging, logos, advertising, point-of-purchase displays, and signage at the company. He studied advertising and design at New York City Community College and later transferred to School of Visual Art where he studied with legendary artist Milton Glaser. King worked at several design studios before entering the music industry as a graphic designer at GRP records, later becoming creative director. He then joined the Verve Music Group, a division of Universal Music Company, and worked with some of the greatest musicians of all time. He has received numerous achievement awards and citations as well as five Grammy Nominations. Currently, he leads his own creative company, sits on an executive board, and regularly lectures at Fashion Institute of Technology, School of Visual Arts, Art Directors Club, and Society of Illustrators. He is the catalogue designer for Imprinting a Nation: Illustrating Race.

Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D.
Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D. is Professor of Art History at University of Cincinnati, where she teaches 19th to 21st century American and European art history. Her publications include New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934 (Rutgers, 2001); essays in The Routledge Companion to African American Art History, Deborah Grant; Harlem Renaissance; Black Paris; Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance;Out of Context: American Artists Abroad; The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, and Picture Cincinnati in Song; and multiple book and exhibition reviews. Leininger-Miller has lectured widely in the United Stated and abroad, and provided expert commentary on radio and television, and in documentaries. The curator of exhibitions at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Yale University Art Gallery, and Weston Art Gallery, she is a Rockwell Center Fellow and the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, Kress and Luce Foundations, and the Smithsonian Institution. At the University of Cincinnati, Leininger-Miller received the Diversity Ambassador Award and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research, among others; she has also served as chair of the Association of Historians of American Art.

Jerry Pinkney* (1939-2021)
Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021); was an award-winning artist who began his creative journey in the field of illustration in 1960. The recipient of a Caldecott Medal, Caldecott Honor Medals, Coretta Scott King Awards, and Coretta Scott King Honor Awards, Pinkney received many commendations for his outstanding body of work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators and an Artist Laureate Award from the Norman Rockwell Museum. In addition to his work in children’s books, Pinkney created illustrations for a wide variety of clients, including the U.S. Postal Service, National Park Service, and National Geographic. He served on the U.S. Postal Services Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, and in 2003, was appointed to the National Endowment for the Arts/NEA, a prestigious position held by the artist for six years. A gifted educator, he mentored aspiring illustrators at Pratt Institute, the University of Delaware, and the SUNY Buffalo. The recipient of Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, he created artworks that are among the collections of The Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Delaware Art Museum, and others. A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech that Inspired a Nation, The Talking Eggs, God Bless the Child, The Old African, John Henry, The Tales of Uncle Remus, and The Lion and the Mouse are among his many illustrated books. His art traveled nationally in Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney and Jerry Pinkney: Imaginings, two exhibitions organized by Norman Rockwell Museum.*

James Ransome
James Ransome is an award-winning illustrator and emeritus Professor of Illustration at Syracuse University. The Children’s Book Council named Ransome one of 75 authors and illustrators everyone should know. He has received both the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration and the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honor Award for The Creation, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Award for Uncle Jed’s Barbershop, an ALA Notable book featured on Reading Rainbow. How Many Stars in the Sky? and Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt were also Reading Rainbow selections, and The Old Dog appeared on PBS’s Storytime. Ransome was the recipient of The Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance award for The WagonLet My People Go was awarded the NAACP Image Award for Illustration; and Satchel Paige was designated a best children’s book by Bank Street College of Education; among many other honors. Freedom Rang, Before She Was Harriet, The Bell Rang, Just a Lucky So and So: The Story of Louis Armstrong, Light in the DarknessHow Animals Saved the People, Visiting DayWords Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass, and Freedom’s School are among his many illustrated books. Ransome has completed commissioned murals for the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis; The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati; and the Hemphill Branch Library in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ph.D.
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ph.D. is a Professor and Chair of English at Pomona College. For 20 years, she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor of English. Her research is primarily focused on Black female representation in mid-19th to early 20th-American literature and visual culture.  She is the author of Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (Rutgers UP, 2007), an interdisciplinary study of representations of the “New Negro” woman as a mixed-race icon in the literary and visual culture of the Harlem Renaissance and Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color, (Rutgers UP, 2012, a 2013 BCALA honor book. She is the editor of A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance (Wiley 2015), and her current scholarly projects include editing the Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including a Kellett Mid-Career Award (UW-Madison), National Endowment for the Humanities Award, and 2019 Outstanding Women of Color Award. Her essay “A Plea for Color: Nella Larsen’s Mulatta Iconography” (2004) was awarded the Foerster prize for best essay published in American literature. Grimoire was a New York Public Library’s Top Ten Poetry Books of 2020.

Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D. is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she is expanding the museum’s collections in architecture and design. She co-curated two inaugural NMAAHC exhibitions: A Century in the Making: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture and A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond. In 2018, she served as lead organizer for the museum’s three-day symposium, “Shifting the Landscape: Black Architects and Planners, 1968 to Now.” Prior to NMAAHC, Wilkinson spent six years as director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. She has also worked at the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. As a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in 2012, she completed a short-term residency at the Design Museum in London. She has presented her research on architectural heritage in the Anglophone Caribbean has been presented to international audiences in Suriname, England, India, and the United States. Wilkinson’s most recent efforts explore issues of representation in architectural renderings.

*Jerry Pinkney participated in the committee until his death in October of 2021. The exhibition and catalogue will be dedicated in his honor and in celebration of his legacy as a master of American illustration.

Related Media

IMPRINTED: ILLUSTRATING RACE

Aired: October 30, 2022

Virtual Program: Martin Luther King Jr. Day – Imprinted: Illustrating Race

Aired: January 2022

Diversity, Perception, and Responsibility in Illustration with Robyn Phillips-Pendleton

Aired: July 2016

Kids Ask: Jerry Pinkney

Aired: July 2020

IN THE NEWS

  • Stephanie and Robyn

WAMC – “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” at The Norman Rockwell Museum through 10/30

September 20th, 2022|Comments Off on WAMC – “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” at The Norman Rockwell Museum through 10/30

The exhibition “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” is on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts through October 30, 2022. Over 300 artworks and objects widely circulated illustrated imagery examine the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. The exhibition explores stereotypical racial representations and moves forward in time to celebrate the accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers whose work emphasizes diversity and inclusivity.

  • Saint Trane, 2012

The Music Soundtrack to “IMPRINTED: Illustrating Race”

July 29th, 2022|Comments Off on The Music Soundtrack to “IMPRINTED: Illustrating Race”

One of the special features of the exhibition IMPRINTED: Illustrating Race, is the soundtrack of music that accompanies you in the galleries.   The music you hear spans over 150 years and crosses over multiple genres.  From spirituals that were first sung in the antebellum south through the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and right up to contemporary music of today.

This collection of music was curated by Rudy Gutierrez, an illustrator featured in the exhibition, and his wife, the vocalist D.K. Dyson.

The following playlists are available on Spotify, a streaming music platform.

  • American Uprising, 2020 - Kadir Nelson

SPOTLIGHT IN OUR LIFETIME: PAINTINGS FROM THE PANDEMIC

July 28th, 2022|Comments Off on SPOTLIGHT IN OUR LIFETIME: PAINTINGS FROM THE PANDEMIC

STOCKBRIDGE — A fist raised high in the air, a foot planted firmly on the step in front of her, the woman at the center of "American Uprising" — wearing a T-shirt with an image of George Floyd and an American flag scarf around her neck — urges the crowd of protestors behind her to follow. It's a moment etched in time — of unity, of a movement to end systemic racism toward African Americans — a Black Lives Matter protest.

  • Rudy Gutierrez - John Coltrane Spirit Flight.

REVIEW: Representation matters: Race and perception are center stage in ‘Imprinted: Illustrating Race’ at the Norman Rockwell Museum

July 12th, 2022|Comments Off on REVIEW: Representation matters: Race and perception are center stage in ‘Imprinted: Illustrating Race’ at the Norman Rockwell Museum

STOCKBRIDGE — The advertisement seems harmless. A cherub faced toddler, rosy-cheeks, a paper hat upon his head and bayonet slung over his shoulder gazes up lovingly at a chef clad all in white save for his red bow tie. The chef, with a serving tray topped with a piping-hot bowl of porridge, stares out at the viewer — an amiable grin on his face.

  • Rudy Gutierrez Saint Trane, 2012

REVIEW: Imprinted: Illustrating Race – Boston Globe

June 22nd, 2022|Comments Off on REVIEW: Imprinted: Illustrating Race – Boston Globe

STOCKBRIDGE — Camera-toting tourists dressed in plaid shorts and short-sleeve jerseys hold the hands of young children in sandals, and silently — almost solemnly — pause before the searing emblem of an era. Hanging on the walls here at the Norman Rockwell Museum is the artist’s famous 1964 depiction of a 6-year-old Black school girl being escorted to class by four faceless federal marshals. Her name is Ruby Bridges.

PRESS RELEASE

STOCKBRIDGE, MA—Norman Rockwell Museum is pleased to announce Imprinted: Illustrating Race, a landmark exhibition on view June 11 through October 30, 2022. This special exhibition examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. More than 150 works of art and artifacts of widely circulated illustrated imagery will be on view, produced from 1590 to today. The exhibition will explore harmful stereotypical racial representations that have been imprinted upon us through the mass publication of images and the resulting noxious impact on public perception about race. It culminates with the creative accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers who have shifted the cultural narrative through the creation of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all. A concurrent marquee installation debuts recent paintings by award-winning illustrator and author Kadir Nelson. Conceptualized and created during the COVID-19 pandemic, these works capture the artist’s reflections on today’s national and world events.

Read more…

Kadir Nelson - After the Storm

ALSO ON VIEW:
Concurrent to the Imprinted exhibition, In Our Lifetime: Paintings from the Pandemic by Kadir Nelson will be on view from June 11 – October 30, 2022. Featuring recent works, which have never been exhibited publicly, this new touring exhibition is organized by socio-political scientist, Dr. Jungmiwha Bullock and debuts at Norman Rockwell Museum. Further details about this solo show and related events are available at: NRM.org/KadirNelson

Learn more about Kadir Nelson at KadirNelson.com

Image Credit:
Kadir Nelson
AFTER THE STORM, 2020.
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist and THE JKBN GROUP.
© 2020 Kadir Nelson.

Reflections on IMPRINTED: Illustrating Race

Imprinted: Illustrating Race provides a critical look at published imagery’s power to influence what people think. And how we feel about ourselves and each other. The exhibition features images that evoke strength, beauty, and joy along with historical depictions of people and cultures that are offensive, wrong then as they are now, and which may be difficult to view.

These Reflections explore a variety of emotional journeys that community members have navigated during exhibition previews and visits to the museum. If you would like to share your reflections with the museum, please email learn@nrm.org.

Selected Images in this Exhibition

Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner, 1869

Thomas Nast (1840-1902)
Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner
Illustration for Harper’s Weekly, November 20, 1869
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection

Arthur Burdett Frost (1858 – 1921), Black and White. (n.d.)

Arthur Burdett Frost (1858 – 1921)
Black and White. (n.d.)
Eisenstat Collection of American Illustration.

Edward V. Brewer (1883-1971) - His Bodyguard,1921

Edward V. Brewer (1883-1971)
“His Bodyguard,” Cream of Wheat Advertisement, The Saturday Evening Post, November 19, 1921.
Illustration for Cream of Wheat
Oil on canvas
Collection of Illustrated Gallery

Black and White, 1912

Harvey Dunn (1884-1952)
Black and White, 1912
“Black and White,” by Irving S. Cobb, The Saturday Evening Post, September 7, 1912, p. 18.
CAPTION: “He warn’t nuthin’ but jus’ a boy, as I told you.”
Kelly Collection of American Illustration

Say Their Names, 2020

E. E. Walton
Goodbye Alexander, Goodbye Honey Boy, 1918
Illustration for sheet music, Lyrics and music by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, New York, NY:  Broadway Music Co., 1918
Printed sheet music
Collection of Theresa Leininger-Miller

Guernsey Moore (1874-1925) - Uncle Sam Americanization, 1921

Guernsey Moore (1874-1925)
Uncle Sam: Americanization, 1921
Gouache on academy board, 20×25 inches
Kelly Collection of American Illustration

O Sing a New Song, 1933

Charles Clarence Dawson (1889–1981)
O Sing a New Song, 1933
Illustration for A Century of Progress World’s Fair, Chicago
Lithograph on paper

James Ransome
Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957)
Rumba, 1942
Lithograph
9 ¼ x 13 in. (23.5 x 33 cm)
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles
© María Elena Rico Covarrubias
James Ransome

Ernest Crichlow (1914-2005)
Portrait of a Girl, c. 1959
Illustrated book study
Gouache and charcoal on paper
Collection of Larry Weekes, Fulton Art Fair
© Ernest Crichlow. All rights reserved.

Golden Rule, 1961

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Golden Rule, 1961.
Oil on canvas
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961.
Collection of Norman Rockwell Museum.
© 1961 SEPS: Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved

Wanted Poster Series #17, 1971

Charles White, American, 1918 –1979
Wanted Poster Series #17 [detail], 1971
Oil and pencil on poster board
Collection of the Flint Institute of Arts
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. B. Morris Pelavin, 1971.43

Robert Cunningham (1924 - ) - Olympic Sprinter

Robert Cunningham (1924 – 2010)
Olympic Sprinter, 1980
Acrylic on Paper
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection
© 1980 Copyright Robert Cunningham Estate

Say Their Names, 2020

Chris Hopkins
Flyer of The 332nd (Tuskegee Airmen Series)
Air Force Art Program
Oil on panel
35.5 x35.5″
Collection of the artist
© Chris Hopkins. All rights reserved.

James Ransome

Jerry Pinkney
Ah Done Lived Grandma’s Way, 1991
Illustration for Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston,
University of Illinois Press
Pencil and wash on paper
Collection of Gloria Jean Pinkney
© 1991 Jerry Pinkney. All rights reserved.

Emory Douglas. (b. 1943) - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1993

Emory Douglas. (b. 1943)
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1993
Cover illustration for the Sun-Reporter, 1993
© 2022 Emory Douglas / Licensed by AFNYLAW.com

Emory Douglas. (b. 1943) - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1993

R. Gregory Christie
Portrait of John Coltrane, 1997
Album cover illustration for Coltrane: The Complete 1960 Village Vanguard Recordings, Released by GRP/Impulse Records
Acrylic on board
Collection of Hollis King
© Gregory Christie. All rights reserved.

Emory Douglas. (b. 1943) - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1993

Rudy Gutierrez
Saint Trane, 2012
Illustration for Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey by Gary Golio (Clarion Books)
Acrylic on board
60 x 40 inches
Collection of the artist
© Rudy Gutierrez. All rights reserved.

James Ransome

Thomas Blackshear
A Common Thread, 2018.
©Thomas Blackshear. All rights reserved.

James Ransome

Kadir Nelson
Stickball Alley, 2018
Cover art for The New Yorker, April 30, 2018.
Collection of the artist and THE JKBN GROUP.
© 2019 Kadir Nelson.

SYMPOSIUM:
Illustration and Race: Rethinking the History of Published Images

Recorded: September 23 through 24, 2023   LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM >

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