The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is an art museum dedicated to the illustrator Norman Rockwell. It is home to the world's largest collection of original Rockwell art.
The museum honors one of the most widely recognized American illustrators of the 20th century, an artist closely identified with covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Alongside its Rockwell holdings, it also hosts traveling exhibitions devoted to American illustration more broadly.
It was founded in 1969 in Stockbridge, the town where Rockwell lived the last 25 years of his life. The museum originally occupied a Main Street building known as the Old Corner House, its first home before a later move to a purpose-suited site.
Twenty-four years after its founding, the museum opened at its current location on 3 April 1993. The building was designed by the New Classical architect Robert A. M. Stern, who would go on to win the Driehaus Architecture Prize in 2011.
The collection centers on 574 original works of art by Rockwell. The museum also maintains the Norman Rockwell Archives, a body of more than 100,000 items including photographs, fan mail and business documents that illuminate how the illustrator worked.
Its holdings have continued to grow through gifts. In 2014, the Famous Artists School donated its archives, including process drawings by Rockwell, who had been one of the school's founding faculty members in 1948, deepening the record of his working method.
Individual works carry their own histories. Girl Reading the Post, painted in 1941, was given by Rockwell to Walt Disney in 1943; Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, later gifted it to the museum in 2000.
The grounds also preserve Rockwell's actual studio, offering visitors a direct view of the space where the illustrator produced much of his celebrated output. Set in the Berkshires, the institution presents Rockwell's career within the wider story of American illustration, and its standing as the largest repository of his originals makes it a primary destination for study of his art.
Reported by Wikipedia (Norman Rockwell Museum).
