Why everybody liked Norman Rockwell
And why it is probably impossible for a visual artist to have such broad appeal in America now
WILL a truce ever be declared in America’s culture wars? One way to tackle that puzzle involves considering all-American icons of the past—figures who bridged social and political divides—and asking how they did it. That mission led Lexington to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Norman Rockwell Museum. Modelled on a New England town hall, it is a handsome shrine to an artist whose work has hung in the Oval Offices of the past four presidents (though a Rockwell painting of the Statue of Liberty’s torch seems to have vanished from Donald Trump’s).
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Norman Rockwell’s lost America”
United States July 29th 2017
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From the July 29th 2017 edition
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