Culture For The Non-Cultured

Lots of cool things in this article about Norman Rockwell, Stockbridge, Mass., and the Norman Rockwell Museum.

– The Museum is going to create the Rockwell Center, which will “transform the museum into a nexus for the study of American illustration art, a woefully neglected field.”

– In his final years, Rockwell used the people of Stockbridge as models for his paintings: Yep, the sometimes simple and syrupy-sweet but ultimately heartening paintings were based on real people

– Rockwell has inspired town reunions: People get together every December to re-create Rockwell’s 1967 painting “Main Street.” And last month many of Rockwell’s former models attended the opening of “The Stockbridge Models Project,” a show organized by the museum in Stockbridge’s new Town Hall, once the high school, where Rockwell sometimes recruited them.

“What we hadn’t counted on was how it was going to turn into a high school reunion,” Ms. Moffatt, the director of the museum said. “It not only triggered the Rockwell memory but also that sense of place and community.”

And, if Rockwell was like his paintings, I think he would’ve been quite happy with that legacy.

Main Street