This weekend's cultural city excursions...Normal Rockwell exhibit

This weekend I was able to take advantage of some of the city's cultural opportunities, including going to a Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, entitled "Telling stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg ."

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing some of Norman Rockwell's sketches and paintings up close. My family owns at least one Norman Rockwell print which used to hang in our kitchen, and I remember seeing various other Norman Rockwell artwork on plates, mugs, and prints in the houses of my relatives when I was growing up. His style and depiction of American life is just so distinct, quaint, and iconic. Rockwell really did have a great gift for capturing the emotion, meaning, and values in scenes from normal, everyday American life. His ability to depict facial expressions was one of the things that I found most impressive. Some of the expressions on his subjects literally made me laugh out loud; the viewer truly enters into the emotion that each painting conveys.

My favorite work in the exhibit was actually a sketch entitled "Charwomen in Theater" The following image is a painting of the same composition.

Norman Rockwell, 1946.

The sentiments in the sketch were very sweet to me -- the sketch depicts two cleaning ladies that work within a theater who have stopped for a moment and look curiously at the theater bill, anxious to read about the latest performance. To me, it's a testament to the ability that art has to touch all people, rich or poor, manual laborer or aristocrat. All men and women have a thirst to experience art which adds beauty to their world and depth to their day to day work.

A few of the other works that I especially enjoyed were "Coming and Going" (depicts the scene of a family coming and going in the car from a family vacation), "Boy Reading Adventure Story (the librarian in me loves the way that this depicts the ability of books to widen one's imagination), "Couple in the Rumble Seat" (shows the excited woman and terrified man's reactions as they ride in the new fangled automobile), and "Happy Birthday Miss Jones" (depicts a teacher's reaction to her students' birthday surprises for her). All in all, it was certainly a delightful exhibit and made me want to learn more about Norman Rockwell's paintings and the stories behind them. Check out the online exhibit if you get the chance, here!