Norman Rockwell: Painter of the American Story

This week our homeschool group went on an educational tour of the exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art entitled "American Chronicles:  The Art of Norman Rockwell."  It is a fabulous exhibit, and, as always, the Museum has put together a wonderful educational tour that is perfect for middle schoolers.

Both the exhibit in general and the tour in particular focus on Rockwell as an artist whose work always tells a story.  And, in general, that story is something sweet or humorous or heart warming about America.  But his stories are not just about America as a concept; their are odes to the everyday, to the common folk, to the ordinary mini-dramas that most of us overlook every day.  Yet, as you look at his art, it makes you think, "These things--these common, everyday people and occurrences--they are so beautiful, so filled with meaning and emotion.  How can I pass by them every day and miss them?"

Norman Rockwell himself said about his art:
Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American....

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.

I think this is a great message for middle schoolers today to hear, born as they were into a culture that seems to worship celebrity over almost everything else and everyone is striving for their 15 minutes of fame promised them by Andy Warhol.  His art is a great companion to the poems of Walt Whitman, the plays of Thornton Wilder, the music of Aaron Copeland, all American artists who found inspiration not in the high and mighty, but in the American Everyman.

He is also a great role model, however, for the care he put into his work as well as his prodigious production abilities.  The tour and exhibit depict how carefully he worked on his illustrations--posing live models, taking photographs, making multiple sketches, then one complete drawing of the final piece before capturing it on canvas.  When you see how much work went into each detail of each painting, you really can't imagine how the man managed to produce more than 4,000 original works.  This really hits home in one large room of the exhibit, where they show all 323 covers of the Saturday Evening Post he created in the 47 years he was their chief illustrator.  You look at all those masterpieces, month after month, year after year, and you can't help but be impressed.

However, not all of Rockwell's art was goodness and light.  In his latter years, instead of resting on his laurels, he began to explore some of the civil rights issues that had been prohibited from his Saturday Evening Post covers.  Here, the tour guide was phenomenal.  She took the students through the story of Rockwell's painting, Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi), the very chilling depiction of the murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in 1964 (click on this link to see the picture itself).  The children were silent and riveted as the tour guide told them about this event and Rockwell's attempts to convey it on canvas.  It's a powerful picture and a powerful story, and very appropriate for middle schoolers, who are grappling with understanding the darker side of history than most of us glossed over when they were in elementary school.

The exhibit will be in Raleigh until January 30, so if you can get there to see it before then, I recommend you do so.    The exhibit reminded me of perhaps Wilder's most famous quote in Our Town:  Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?  Well, if anyone ever did, it was Norman Rockwell.

Art Museum Seeking Teacher Input

I had a great experience today.  I got to be part of a brainstorming session for teachers sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art.  As I assume at least the locals (Raleigh-area) know, the NC Museum of Art opened a new state-of-the-art building this spring.  New technology allows the walls to bring in sunlight without damaging the art, which to me, at least, totally transforms my experience of viewing the art.  I love the new building (although my son complains because the building is all rectangular...).

Anyway, with the new building, the Museum is changing lots of other things as well.  So they were sponsoring this session to get input about redesigning their teacher education/support systems, workshops, and tours, both online and in person.  Because their charge is to share resources with the entire state, not just those of us who are lucky enough to live close to the museum, they are particularly looking into ways to do more teacher education online (although they continue to work on teacher workshops and tours and such).

The staff said that in the past, they had tended to try to tie museum resource to particular curricula---so, for example, NCMA painting related to social studies, to science, etc.   They reported that, frankly, that hadn't worked too well.  So they are looking into new ways to organize and present their teacher resources.

They had us do a few exercises involving NCMA paintings that relate to curricula, and then revealed their new approach.  They are working towards organizing resources more along the lines of concepts, such as conflict, perspective, patterns, interdependence, environment, technology, etc.  They are thinking these concepts are a better way to approach the collect because they involved multiple disciplines (since art, math, social studies, language arts, etc. might all talk about the concept of pattern or environment).  They also plan to have things like tags to align resources or lessons with specific educational disciplines or topics, but think the conceptual approach will better foster more curriculum integration among more classes.

Anyway, it was a fun session, but even more, it was a great opportunity for teachers to have a say into how a major state resource is planning to serve them better.   They were very open to suggestions, and asked us to email them if we had more ideas or concerns after some time considering this approach.

So if anyone has any feedback about this idea about organizing the educational resources along the lines of concept, please let me know and I'll will share them with the organizers.  I know they would really appreciate your opinions about how the Museum can best serve educators of whatever variety (public, private, homeschool) or level (preschool-college).

Also, just in the name of full disclosure, I also attended a similar session at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University this summer.  It is wonderful to have these great resources available to us, and even more wonderful that they are reaching out to us and trying to find out how they can best serve us.