From the mouths of babes...

A couple of weeks ago, we listed some of the comments from preschool visitors to Norman Rockwell's exhibition, Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective. Here are a few more observations from this astute group of art critics.

Freedom of Worship

"They don't want to be old anymore."
"It's a necklace. She took it off because it scratched." (referring to Rosary beads)

The Connoisseur

"Yuk!"
"It would be bad to eat."
"The man had fun painting it."

The Fireman

"It's only a picture of a picture."
"It's a fireman...he doesn't like it because it doesn't smell good."
"Those words [Rockwell signature] say 'No Smoking'."
"He can't put out that little fire."


It seems like they really enjoyed their visit.





Freedom of Worship

The Fireman

The Connoisseur



Kids say the darndest things...

You never know what you might find around here.  Our archives assistant, Jenna, recently came across a list of comments by a class of preschool children.  They had viewed the exhibition Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective in 1973 at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.  Here's what these kids had to say about a few of the paintings:
 
Portrait of Nixon

"That's President Lixon." (pronounced with an "L")
"We voted for President Lincoln."
"He's good because my mom and dad voted for him."

Freedom from Want

"It's Thanksgiving! But we didn't have turkey - we had cheese sandwiches and milk."
"They're drinking wine water." (white wine)

The Jester

"Those shoes are like Peter Pan."
"He's sad but his friend is happy.  Bat Man killed his friends."
"He has bells so he won't get lost."

 

The Jester

Portrait of Nixon

Freedom from Want

 

There you have it.  The four year old perspective.  More to come soon!

Old Books!

We recently received a donation of approximately 173 books from museum board member Bob Horvath. Adding these new books to our small library was a challenge due to space constraints (a new bookcase and extensive weeding of our book collection were required!), but they are a worthy addition to our collection.

The new bookshelf

The majority of the books date from the 1880s to the 1930s, making quite a few of them over 100 years old. Most of them are illustrated novels or books of poetry. A great number of them feature illustrations by distinguished American artist Howard Pyle, whose work was exhibited at the museum last summer. Pyle is well-known for his illustrated childrens' novels, particularly those featuring pirates. The books are a real treasure for bibliophiles, with many featuring beautiful covers such as this copy of The Island of Enchantment by Justus Miles Forman:

Another beautiful cover is this one, found on Pyle's novel The Garden Behind the Moon:

Written six years after the death of Pyle's young son Sellers, The Garden Behind the Moon is a childrens' novel dealing with the subjects of death and the afterlife.
Beginning in 1903 and concluding in 1910, Pyle published a four-part retelling of the Arthurian legends. These books featured numerous striking black and white illustrations. The donation contained multiple copies of these books, including special 1933 editions commemorating Pyle's eightieth birthday. Other notable artists contributed new frontispieces for the novels.

Illustration of Guinevere by Pyle, from The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

The 1933 edition of The Story of King Arthur and His Knights features a frontispiece of Morgan le Fay's enchanted barge by W. J. Aylward.
Going through the books has been a very enjoyable experience- it's not every day that I get to handle old books like these.

Progress on the new IMLS grant

We're currently working on an IMLS grant, which involves the digitization of our photographic print collection. This collection consists primarily of the reference photos Rockwell used when creating his works. Our collection of photos encompasses some 60 years, from the early 1900's to the 1970's. There are approximately 200 boxes of photos in total.

That's a lot of boxes of photos, & there are more on the shelves behind these!

For this grant, we are sending the photos away to be scanned so that we can then add them to our digital collections. Every box needed to be sorted through, to avoid selecting duplicates or images that were already available in our digital collections. Once that was done, each photo to be sent out had to be re-sleeved and labeled. As you might imagine, this was quite a lengthy process. We officially started at the end of September and we finished in late March. About 7,500 photos have been sent out so far, and there are many more oddly-sized ones that we'll be scanning in-house.

I couldn't help but feel a huge sense of accomplishment when we finished going through these photos. There's still a lot more work left to do, but it's a big milestone. Of all the photos I looked through, my favorites were the series of photos Rockwell used for several Pan Am ads in the late 1950's. It was quite a lot of fun to look at photos from various foreign locations, such as Thailand, Japan, and Rome.

Wrapping up the NHPRC grant

At the end of September, we completed basic processing of our entire archives thanks to a grant from the NHPRC.  We were able to process, and create finding aids for, more than 40 collections.  These 40 collections represented about 90% of the materials in our archives, many of which were completely inaccessible to researchers.

Thankfully, these collections are now available for researcher use.  Additionally, the finding aids have been posted to our website: www.nrm.org,  and have also been submitted to OCLC/ArchiveGrid, an online public access catalog (OPAC).

It's been a long two years, but now the final paperwork is being completed, and will be submitted at the end of the month.  Happy holidays!

MacBook of the 1930's



Remington Portable Model 5



A fantastic donation was recently given to the archives by Anne Oppermann, former secretary to Norman Rockwell.  Anne was also the daughter of Ejner Handberg, the designer and builder of Rockwell's Stockbridge studio.

She worked as Rockwell's typist during the years 1957 to 1961, responding to his significant amount of fan mail.  Here in the archives, we have many thousands of fan letters that Rockwell received during the course of his career. Anne estimated that Rockwell was sent approximately 20 fan letters per week, with a large spike in numbers during those weeks when one of his Post covers was published.

This typewriter was actually given to Anne by Rockwell in order for her to complete this task.  Although she didn't begin working for him until the late 1950's, this typwriter - a Reminington Portable Model 5 - was already an "antique," having been made between the years 1932 and 1939.  At that time, it carried a hefty price tag of $65.  In today's dollars, that would be about $1090. I think it was probably worth it because nearly 80 years later, it still works!

Find of the Week!

       Every once in a while you come across one of those rare items which really makes your day.  For me, yesterday was one of those days. 

       In my efforts to get the final few boxes of  random “stuff” processed, I came across several letters in a folder marked “Miscellaneous Correspondence.”  Wanting to have a label more specific than that, I began to read one of the handwritten letters in hopes of finding out who “Joe,” the signer of the letter, actually was.  By the end of the second page it was clear; “Joe” was none other than J.C. Leyendecker.

      For those not familiar with J.C. Leyendecker, he was truly one of the pre-eminent illustrators of the early 20^th century.  He is probably best known for his advertisements for the Arrow Collar Man, as well as his 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post.  He was greatly admired by Norman Rockwell, and was a significant influence on him, especially during his early artistic career.

      Rockwell once said that while living in New Rochelle, New York, he used to wait for Leyendecker’s train to arrive so that he could follow him up the long stairway, out onto the street, and down to his car, hoping that if he could copy Leyendecker’s curious gait, that some of his greatness would rub off on him.  Little could Rockwell have imagined that one day, not only would he become friends with Leyendecker, but that he would be compared to him, and held up as his artistic equal.

April 22, 1945

Dear Norman,

Many thanks for forwarding that letter.  It was good to hear from you again, and wish I could have been with you when visiting Josephine and Harry.

New Rochelle is not the same since all our old friends have gone and I hope the ban on travel may soon be lifted and we may look forward in seeing you and Mary again.

It goes without saying that I follow your work in the magazines. It is always tops.  It is a pleasure to turn to one of your pictures, that even in the reproduction shows all the quality and depth of the original painting.

We are still moving some trees this spring, but will soon be forced to quit as most of them have grown to enormous proportions.

Hereafter I suppose I’ll have to content myself with just puttering around with flowers.

My kindest regards and best wishes to you all.

Sincerely, Joe

Beach sends his best