Right after Labor Day, good friends and I wanted to get together. We picked the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. It was a convenient location -- halfway between where we all live -- and had something of interest to everyone. For Anne Bailey, a retired school teacher and talented watercolor artist, Rockwell's illustrations and paintings were a source of inspiration and new ideas. For her husband, Jim, active in Plattsburgh, N.Y., historical groups and museums, there was a wealth of information in the exhibits and videos. It all combines to create a nostalgic and thoughtful visual journey through 20th century America. Fall is a wonderful time to visit the Berkshires, with the colorful and changing foliage, seasonable temperatures and lighter crowds (except during peak foliage.)
The Rockwell Museum always has interesting exhibits. It is located in a beautiful setting with picnic tables and walking paths overlooking the Berkshires.
The museum has the world's largest original collection of Norman Rockwell's work. You can see ''The Art of Norman Rockwell'' before it heads out on a traveling exhibit in November. There are more than 70 original works, from every decade of his career, including rarely seen paintings from public and private collections.
There is a very different ideal shown in the exhibit of illustrator Al Parker' stylish edgy compositions from women's magazines between 1940-1960. This runs through Oct. 28.
The Rockwell works show how he matured as an artist from commercial illustrations to a masterful painter, draftsman and storyteller.
Rockwell did 321 cover paintings for The Saturday Evening Post between 1916 and 1963. Many were patriotic wartime images and idealized hometown and family scenes that came to represent the nation's identity.
But a lot of Americans were left out of that magazine cover world -- the '50s tended to do that -- and during the last 20 years of his life, Rockwell's work changed dramatically. He began to express a compelling social conscience when he left the Post to work for Look magazine in 1963.
At Look, he was free to explore broader social themes: racism and civil rights, the war on poverty, space exploration, the right to know the reasons for government actions. Jeremy Clowe, communications assistant at the museum, said that ''The Four Freedoms'' are among visitors' favorites. Inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rockwell created four scenes from everyday life to celebrate the freedoms of speech and expression, of every person to worship in his own way, of freedom from hunger and from fear.
Rockwell had been inspired by Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech to Congress on Jan. 6, 1941. The Post, one of the nation's most popular magazines, commissioned the series from Rockwell and reproduced them. The public loved them and they became the centerpiece of a massive U.S. war bond drive.
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4:33Norman Rockwell Paintingsby CRAIGRYFF7,786 views
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