DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms -- 3 After 4Freedom paintings:
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Description of Pictures: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms
February 13, 2019 through April 29, 2019
Norman Rockwell’s masterpieces make their way to Washington as part of a major international traveling exhibition on the Four Freedoms famously outlined by Franklin D. Roosevelt: freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. In Enduring Ideals, Rockwell’s iconic paintings and works by other artists capture expressions of freedom from World War II to today.
Docents lead free walk-in tours of the galleries on Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 p.m. You can also register online for a private tour of the exhibition for groups of six to forty people.
Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms has been organized by Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Leadership support is provided by Jay Alix, the Alix Foundation, and the George Lucas Family Foundation.
Same Event: Wait! There's more! Because I took too many pictures, photos from this event were divided among the following pages:
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2019_DC_GWU_Museum_4FreePr: DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms -- 1 Before 4Freedom paintings (293 photos from 2019)
2019_DC_GWU_Museum_4Free: DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms -- 2 Four Freedom paintings (156 photos from 2019)
2019_DC_GWU_Museum_4FreePo: DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms -- 3 After 4Freedom paintings (118 photos from 2019)
2019_DC_GWU_Museum_4FreeR: DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms -- 4 Reimagining 4Freedom paintings (120 photos from 2019)
2018_NY_NYHS_4Freedoms: NY -- NYC -- New-York Historical Society -- Exhibit: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms (202 photos from 2018)
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4FRPOS_190214_001.JPG: Presidential Medal of Freedom Proclamation
Presented by President Gerald Ford to Norman Rockwell, accepted by Jarvis Rockwell III on behalf of his father, January 10, 1977
4FRPOS_190214_005.JPG: Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1977
Presented by President Gerald Ford to Norman Rockwell, accepted by Jarvis Rockwell III on behalf of his father, January 10, 1977
4FRPOS_190214_015.JPG: Setsuko Sato Winchester
Freedom from Fear / Yellow Bowl Project, 2016
Photographed at Norman Rockwell Museum, February 16, 2016
Freedom from Fear / Yellow Bowl Project by artist and journalist Setsuko Sato Winchester features photographic images picturing 120 hand-made yellow tea bowls at Japanese American concentration camp sites and other places of national importance. The artist's ceramic bowls represent the approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were forcibly relocated and detained during World War II as a result of Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942 by President Roosevelt. Sato Winchester seeks to raise awareness of this aspect of American history in the spirit of informing, educating, and reminding us of what may happen when fear rules the day. As seen here, the yellow tea bowls were photographed at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island, New York.
4FRPOS_190214_018.JPG: Freedom's Legacy
President Roosevelt made clear that the Four Freedoms were "no vision of a distant millennium." Their odyssey did not end with FDR, nor with Rockwell. As World War II came to a close, the Allies began to hold planning meetings for what would become the United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt, who championed the late president's legacy, ceaselessly touted FDR's freedoms as an appropriate summation of democracy and human rights, and war weary nations agreed. Enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Four Freedoms are a testament and an inspiration that arose from the ashes of war to affirm the precious nature of freedom everywhere in the world.
The Four Freedoms have continued to play a prominent role in national and international thought. Many constitutions have adopted these ideals as a guarantee of human rights. Heroic individuals -- from those who have fought for the rights of enslaved populations to those who have dared to criticize totalitarian governments -- have been recipients of the Roosevelt Institute's Four Freedoms Awards. The Four Freedoms Park, a memorial to FDR on New York's Roosevelt Island, is a reminder of the challenge that we continue to face in upholding freedom at home and abroad. Rockwell's interpretations, too, have lived on. His Four Freedoms are among the most recognizable images in American history. Whether we encounter them in the original, in print, or online, they are constant reminders of the profound influence of visual imagery on the human imagination. They reveal FDR's timeless ideals in real world terms, even as they remind us that we, too, are heirs to these cherished values.
4FRPOS_190214_021.JPG: Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned the Four Freedoms that Norman Rockwell immortalized on canvas, Eleanor Roosevelt inspired the citizens and leaders of the world to acknowledge their continued significance. Convinced that the United States had been "spared for a purpose" from the destruction the war had inflicted on other nations, she seized all avenues at her disposal -- speeches, newspaper columns, articles, private conversation, correspondence -- to urge Americans to recognize what was a stake and assume both the responsibility and the financial cost of world leadership. Fervently and repeatedly, Roosevelt cautioned her fellow Americans: "You cannot live for yourselves alone. You depend on the rest of the world and the rest of the world depends on you." She understood how crucial a commonly shared vision could be in overcoming the haunting legacy of war.
Established in 1946 by the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights promptly elected Roosevelt its chair. Charged with creating an international bill of rights, the UNCHR put forward, for the first time, a definitive outline of the fundamental human rights to be universally protected. To accomplish this, Roosevelt conducted more than three thousand hours of debate, and had to create a climate in which all eighteen member nations -- which represented very different political and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world -- could envision and articulate rights and freedoms. The Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris, on December 10, 1948. Since then, it has inspired dozens of international covenants, the creation of international courts, new governments, and an increasingly powerful international movement. She considered this work to be her finest achievement, as it instituted a legacy for the Four Freedoms and left them in our hands to protect.
4FRPOS_190214_024.JPG: Changing Times: Rockwell and Civil Rights
In the 1960's, leaving behind his beloved storytelling scenes, Norman Rockwell threw himself into a new genre -- the documentation of social issues. As evidenced in his Freedoms paintings, he wanted to make a difference with his art, and as a trusted and highly marketable illustrator, he had the opportunity to do so. Humor and pathos -- traits that made his Saturday Evening Post covers successful -- were replaced by the direct, reportorial style of magazine editorials.
After ending his forty-seven year career with The Post in 1963, Rockwell sought new artistic challenges. His first assignment for Look -- The Problem We All Live With -- portrayed a six-year-old African-American girl being escorted by U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school in New Orleans, an assertion on moral decency. In 1965, Rockwell focused on the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and in 1967, he chose children, once again, to illustrate desegregation in our nation's suburbs. In an interview later in his life, Rockwell recalled that he once had to paint out an African-American person in a picture since The Post's policy dictated showing people of color in service industry jobs only. Freed from such restraints, Rockwell anxiously sought opportunities to correct the editorial prejudices reflected in his previous work.
4FRPOS_190214_027.JPG: Norman Rockwell
The Right to Know, 1968
Illustration for Look, August 20, 1968
In 1966, Rockwell was commissioned to create a military recruitment poster, but he felt conflicted about the war in Vietnam. In March 1967, he wrote to the Marine Corps to decline the assignment: "I just can't paint a picture unless I have my heart in it." One year later, Rockwell began work on The Right to Know -- a political statement expressing the right of citizens to be informed of the rationale behind their government's actions. Just months before the painting was to be published, The New York Times reported on the Pentagon Papers, a scandal involving the White House's suppression of information regarding troops escalation in Vietnam.
4FRPOS_190214_046.JPG: The Problem We All Live With (1963)
Norman Rockwell's original Four Freedoms paintings have come for a visit to Washington DC. Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms opened at the GW Museum and Textile Museum on February 13. The exhibit features almost three dozen Rockwell originals, some World War II-era illustrators, and contemporary artists reinterpreting the four freedoms, several of which seem to be under attack these days. Go see it!
4FRPOS_190214_060.JPG: Norman Rockwell
The Problem We All Live With, 1963
Illustration for Look, January 14, 1964
After resigning his forty-seven year tenure with The Saturday Evening Post in 1963, Rockwell embraced the challenge of addressing the nation's pressing concerns in a pared down, reportorial style. The Problem We All Live With for Look magazine is based upon an actual event, when six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted by US marshals to her first day at an all-white New Orleans school. Rockwell's depiction of the vulnerable but dignified girl clearly condemns the actions of those who protest her presence and object to desegregation.
4FRPOS_190214_062.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Portrait of Model Lynda Gunn
Study for The Problem We All Live With, Look, January 14, 1964
4FRPOS_190214_067.JPG: White Cotton Dress
From Lynda Gunn, Norman Rockwell model for The Problem We All Live With
Rockwell commissioned this white dress, and two others like it, in different sizes from a local Stockbridge, Massachusetts, seamstress. He was not yet sure of the age or size of his model, and he typically posed several people in the same role before deciding who best fit the part. For the child in The Problem We All Live With, he ultimately selected his neighbor, Lynda Gunn.
4FRPOS_190214_075.JPG: Norman Rockwell
The Right to Know, 1968
Study illustration for Look, August 20, 1968
When establishing a palette for his paintings, Rockwell typically photographed his large-scale preparatory drawings and painted over the photographs to consider color choices.
4FRPOS_190214_080.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Illustration for Southern Justice by Charles Morgan, Jr., Look, June 29, 1965
Rockwell was told to proceed with his Murder in Mississippi painting based upon his presentation of this sketch. After receiving the final painting, however, Look art director, Allen Hurlburt, chose to publish the study instead.
4FRPOS_190214_085.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Unpublished illustration for Look
On June 21, 1964, civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were brutally murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Look commissioned Rockwell to create this illustration for an investigative article about the crime. The work is unusual for Rockwell. It is stark, monochromatic, and sparsely painted. Rockwell focuses on the plight of the activists. The klansmen are visible only as ominous shadows encroaching upon their victims from the right. Look decided to publish Rockwell's more impressionistic study for the painting rather than this finished work.
4FRPOS_190214_100.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Blood Brothers, 1968
Unpublished study illustration for Look
Blood Brothers was conceived in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the urban unrest it provoked. It began as a picture of two men, one black and one white, lying dead in the ghetto after a race riot. At the request of Look editors, Rockwell transformed the figures to soldiers in Vietnam, and the meaning of the painting to the equalizing effects of war.
4FRPOS_190214_104.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Blood Brothers, 1968
Unpublished study illustration for Look
The composition of Blood Brothers borrows from The Dead Matador by the 19th-century French artist Edouard Manet. Rockwell referenced an image of archetypal status to underscore both the drama of his subject and the timelessness of his statement. The African-American soldier lies in the same position as the dead matador. His outstretched arm leads us to his helmet, which contains mementos of human experience -- a playing card (the ace of hearts) and a photo of a loved one. Look magazine chose not to publish Blood Brothers. A year later, Rockwell divulged to the painting's new owner, "They got scared."
4FRPOS_190214_111.JPG: Norman Rockwell
JFK's Legacy: The Peace Corps, 1966
Cover illustration for Look, June 14, 1966
On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps to "promote world peace and friendship" among nations. Rockwell expressed his admiration for the program: "In this sordid world of power struggles, politics and national rivalries the Peace Corps seems to stand almost alone." This cover illustration commemorates the Peace Corps' fifth anniversary. Rockwell used former Peace Corps volunteers as models and based his portrait of Kennedy on a photograph by Jacques Lowe, the official photographer of the president's pivotal 1960 campaign.
4FRPOS_190214_130.JPG: Norman Rockwell
United Nations, 1953
Unpublished study
At the height of the Cold War and two years into the Korean War, Rockwell considered the United Nations the world's hope for the future. His appreciation for the organization and its mission inspired a complex work portraying sixty-five people representing the nations of the world along with members of the Security Council. Pictured here are Soviet Ambassador Valerian Alexandrovich Zorin, British Ambassador Sir Gladwyn Jebb, and United States Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. United Nations never made it to canvas, but Rockwell's desire to picture a global community was realized on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in Golden Rule nine years later.
4FRPOS_190214_149.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Golden Rule, 1961
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961
Golden Rule features a gathering of men, women, and children of different races, religions, and ethnicities. The inscription "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You" was simple but universal and reflected the artist's personal philosophy. Rockwell considered himself a citizen of the world and traveled throughout his life. Of the painting, Rockwell said "I had tried to depict all the peoples of the world gathered together. That is just what I wanted to express about the Golden Rule."
4FRPOS_190304_01.JPG: Norman Rockwell
JFK's Legacy: The Peace Corps, 1966
Cover illustration for Look, June 14, 1966
On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps to "promote world peace and friendship" among nations. Rockwell expressed his admiration for the program: "In this sordid world of power struggles, politics and national rivalries the Peace Corps seems to stand almost alone." This cover illustration commemorates the Peace Corps' fifth anniversary. Rockwell used former Peace Corps volunteers as models and based his portrait of Kennedy on a photograph by Jacques Lowe, the official photographer of the president's pivotal 1960 campaign.
4FRPOS_190304_28.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Golden Rule, 1961
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961
Golden Rule features a gathering of men, women, and children of different races, religions, and ethnicities. The inscription "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You" was simple but universal and reflected the artist's personal philosophy. Rockwell considered himself a citizen of the world and traveled throughout his life. Of the painting, Rockwell said "I had tried to depict all the peoples of the world gathered together. That is just what I wanted to express about the Golden Rule."
4FRPOS_190304_60.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Unpublished illustration for Look
On June 21, 1964, civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were brutally murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Look commissioned Rockwell to create this illustration for an investigative article about the crime. The work is unusual for Rockwell. It is stark, monochromatic, and sparsely painted. Rockwell focuses on the plight of the activists. The klansmen are visible only as ominous shadows encroaching upon their victims from the right. Look decided to publish Rockwell's more impressionistic study for the painting rather than this finished work.
4FRPOS_190304_82.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Illustration for Southern Justice by Charles Morgan, Jr., Look, June 29, 1965
Rockwell was told to proceed with his Murder in Mississippi painting based upon his presentation of this sketch. After receiving the final painting, however, Look art director, Allen Hurlburt, chose to publish the study instead.
4FRPOS_190313_001.JPG: Norman Rockwell
United Nations, 1953
Unpublished study
At the height of the Cold War and two years into the Korean War, Rockwell considered the United Nations the world's hope for the future. His appreciation for the organization and its mission inspired a complex work portraying sixty-five people representing the nations of the world along with members of the Security Council. Pictured here are Soviet Ambassador Valerian Alexandrovich Zorin, British Ambassador Sir Gladwyn Jebb, and United States Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. United Nations never made it to canvas, but Rockwell's desire to picture a global community was realized on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in Golden Rule nine years later.
4FRPOS_190313_005.JPG: Certain figures repeat in both of these paintings
4FRPOS_190313_045.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Golden Rule, 1961
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961
Golden Rule features a gathering of men, women, and children of different races, religions, and ethnicities. The inscription "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You" was simple but universal and reflected the artist's personal philosophy. Rockwell considered himself a citizen of the world and traveled throughout his life. Of the painting, Rockwell said "I had tried to depict all the peoples of the world gathered together. That is just what I wanted to express about the Golden Rule."
4FRPOS_190313_093.JPG: Norman Rockwell
The Right to Know, 1968
Illustration for Look, August 20, 1968
In 1966, Rockwell was commissioned to create a military recruitment poster, but he felt conflicted about the war in Vietnam. In March 1967, he wrote to the Marine Corps to decline the assignment: "I just can't paint a picture unless I have my heart in it." One year later, Rockwell began work on The Right to Know -- a political statement expressing the right of citizens to be informed of the rationale behind their government's actions. Just months before the painting was to be published, The New York Times reported on the Pentagon Papers, a scandal involving the White House's suppression of information regarding troops escalation in Vietnam.
4FRPOS_190313_126.JPG: Norman Rockwell
The Right to Know, 1968
Study illustration for Look, August 20, 1968
When establishing a palette for his paintings, Rockwell typically photographed his large-scale preparatory drawings and painted over the photographs to consider color choices.
4FRPOS_190313_153.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Unpublished illustration for Look
On June 21, 1964, civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were brutally murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Look commissioned Rockwell to create this illustration for an investigative article about the crime. The work is unusual for Rockwell. It is stark, monochromatic, and sparsely painted. Rockwell focuses on the plight of the activists. The klansmen are visible only as ominous shadows encroaching upon their victims from the right. Look decided to publish Rockwell's more impressionistic study for the painting rather than this finished work.
4FRPOS_190313_169.JPG: Norman Rockwell
Murder in Mississippi, 1965
Illustration for Southern Justice by Charles Morgan, Jr., Look, June 29, 1965
Rockwell was told to proceed with his Murder in Mississippi painting based upon his presentation of this sketch. After receiving the final painting, however, Look art director, Allen Hurlburt, chose to publish the study instead.
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2019 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
a four-day jaunt to Massachusetts (Boston, Stockbridge, and Springfield) to experience rain in another state,
Asheville, NC to visit Dad and his wife Dixie,
four trips to New York City (including the United Nations, Flushing, and the New York Comic-Con), and
my 14th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Utah).
Number of photos taken this year: about 582,000.
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