At the end of September, Norman Rockwell Museum Director and CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt will retire after 40 years leading the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, institution.
Rockwell created his iconic depictions of American life from the Southern Berkshire community until his death at 84 in 1978.
Norton Moffatt led the museum through a critical reappraisal of Rockwell's work. Ahead of her retirement, she sat down with Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes in the museum's galleries to reflect on her career.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Norton Moffatt: I think what we have been able to create here at Norman Rockwell Museum is a strong sense of community regionally, but also nationally around Norman Rockwell — around illustration art. His work remains as relevant and compelling today as when he painted it. He’s recognized as a very important figure in American art, and really someone who inspires and uplifts so many people.
Landes: Part of what’s so interesting is that given the explicitly political nature of some of Norman Rockwell's art, that understanding of him as an American artist must have gone through some permutation and conversation over four decades. How do you feel like his identity and the values he expressed — do they exist today in 2026 differently than they did 20 or 40 years ago?
Norton Moffatt: Your question touches on something that I was actually thinking about with the news of Dolly Parton's passing, and how here was a beloved, revered artistic figure who cut across all spectrums of politics, religion.
There were no differences around Dolly Parton, and that same phenomenon has always existed around Norman Rockwell's art, and his art appeals to a wide spectrum of people who hold many different beliefs.
I think what why his work is able to do that. There's an inherent optimism and hopefulness in it. There's a compelling humanity and a sense of resilience that tomorrow offers a better day, another opportunity to continue to create the communities we love to live in and the country we aspire to grow.
I think artists, at their peak of their work, they transcend ideology, they transcend differences, and they bring people together. Rockwell has always done that. His work did that during his lifetime, and it continues to do that here at the museum and wherever it is seen. When we travel our exhibitions to other museums around the country and around the globe, that same sense of optimism and togetherness is experienced in those communities.
Landes: What you're referring to between Dolly Parton and Norman Rockwell that I think is so interesting is this idea of figures in America that represent some sort of monoculture.
We talk a lot about how in 2026 it's a very divided time. People are watching very heavily tailored feeds of culture and information and art, as opposed to these figures like Norman and Dolly, who, as you say, sort of transcended a lot of those boundaries. What are your thoughts on your own optimism about some of these things being able to maintain through again what a lot of people reflect on as being a very shattered time?
Norton Moffatt: Your observation about the transcendent ability of artists of Norman Rockwell or Dolly Parton's stature, or many other artistic figures, is they really help us think about what we care about.
They help us think about each other as people, as humans, and there's not an ideology behind their work as much as a hopeful sense of community and caring, and on a day-to-day basis, I think we all care about the person standing across from us and these divides that are fostered, particularly today with the kinds of communication tools that exist, very different from Rockwell's time, where there was more of a monoculture.
There was the Saturday Evening Post, which one-of-four Americans read. It was a very influential publication where the ideas and the hopefulness and images in those paintings were experienced by many people, and so artists have a special role in society, and they help us see, they help us feel and think about ideas. An artist of Rockwell’s stature, or many other figures who achieve that transcendent level of communication and experience for people, are very important to who we are as a culture.
Landes: I wanted to turn to your expertise as a nonprofit arts leader in Berkshire County.
If you were going to put together your guide, the ‘101’ to what it means to successfully foster, grow, and make something like the Rockwell Museum such an indelible part of this landscape, what would you say to an up-and-coming CEO or your successor about what makes it work, because certainly you've made it work for over 40 years now.
Norton Moffatt: Your observation that the Berkshires are a very special place with so many cultural organizations, so many nonprofit organizations, also in the social services and education arena, it's really a fertile place for organizations to do good in the world, to really put roots down in their community, and to care about the people, both internally within an organization, and in the towns and communities we live in, as well as the larger world, which many of us here in the Berkshires serve, national and international audiences, so I think it's that human quality of caring.
I have a personal philosophy that everybody is equally important. All positions and roles in the museum are vital to its success, vital to the experience that a visitor has, vital to our ability to take our work out across the country, whether it's a traveling exhibition or an education curriculum that a teacher will use in a classroom far afield.
I think the human quality of leadership that makes an organization successful, and you need a good solid financial foundation as well, because of course we cannot do our work without the groundswell of support of people who believe in the mission of the not-for-profit organizations that they like to support, and the Berkshires are a very generous community to so many nonprofits.
Landes: You're leaving at a very interesting time for both the Berkshires and the country, where a lot of traditional sources of, say, federal funding are drying up. The economy is not looking really great right now. We do have this incredible amount of nonprofits in the region. What do you think is going to be happening with that in the coming years? I've heard from so many leaders that you end up competing for the same pool of resources with so many other neighboring institutions.
Standing right now and looking ahead, do you have optimism or concern about the ability for the Berkshires to continue to sustain that many nonprofit organizations?
Norton Moffatt: I am by nature an optimistic person and have always had an optimistic view of both our museum, this organization, as well as this fertile and generous community that we live in here in the Berkshires.
We've come through very hard times, both in this museum's lifetime and in this country's lifetime. I think it's one of the things that Norman Rockwell portrays so well that during the last century, periods of Great World War, the Great Depression, periods of unrest with civil rights, with the Vietnam War, he found an optimism to portray in his art and to lift up people's spirits and their confidence that there's a better day around tomorrow.
I think the challenges we are seeing right now, there's every reason to expect that they will turn around, and one of the very important foundations for this museum and for many organizations is to have a diversification of support systems — your admissions, your earned revenue, your philanthropy, traveling exhibitions in our case allow us to bring our art to other communities, which brings export dollars into the community, and so the foundation of the creative economy here in Berkshire County and the organizations like the Clark and Tanglewood and Jacob's Pillow and Mass MoCA —organizations who have a reach that goes far beyond the Berkshires have an ability to inspire support from outside the region, and I think that helps the organizations who are doing direct service into the community be supported by the local community who benefits directly from their work.
There's a place for all of us, and I think that diversification is essential. When one revenue stream is challenged, hopefully there's another that helps tide you through.
Landes: Talking about diversification, I imagine there's times where you've taken big swings to try out something new to see if it's going to be part of that successful formula. When you think back over your career, what examples come to mind of like, ‘we're going to take Norman Rockwell, his reputation and legacy, and sort of pair it with this other thing, or take a sort of a step outside of the box.’ What were some successful examples you've pursued?
Norton Moffatt: I can think of a couple that have been transformative for the museum. I did mention our traveling exhibition program. This was an idea that, at first, was inspired by a trustee who said we really should be taking the art to where the people are in the winter. For example, it's very slow and quiet here in our visitation in the winter, but in other parts of the country, it's prime season. And by reaching out to museum colleagues and creating exhibitions that could travel, we were able to create a more steady revenue stream across the year, and also benefit those communities who would not have a chance to come to Stockbridge and see Norman Rockwell's art, so it shared our national resource that we care for here all across the country, and in fact globally in the many countries we've also exhibited in.
We've also made a deep investment in our digital work here. About 20 years ago, we started digitizing our collections at the time that that became possible, and that has grown into the ability to create curriculum for schools, so that we can bring our art out into classrooms all across the country. Lessons around democracy and civics, and making art, and the kinds of history that's evident in Rockwell's works. That’s something that funders and donors believe in to be able to bring that kind of content all across the country. That would be another example of being able to use the technology of today and extend the reach of the museum.
Landes: I have certainly found in my career that failure is also an important instructive tool in developing your abilities in any space. Were there any things you tried with the museum that did not work out, where you were like, ‘well, you know, we tried it, and that's that.’
Norton Moffatt: You have to learn to fail fast.
There is one example in the digital realm that we tried a year or so ago and experimented with NFTs, the digital collectibles that were popular at the time, but they weren't they weren't popular with Norman Rockwell or with this museum, and so we tried that for a year, but we didn't repeat it because it didn't gain widespread popularity.
Landes: In speaking with other leaders of nonprofit institutions, I know that maintaining relationships on multiple levels in the Berkshires is important.
When you think about your relationship with elected officials, be it you know here in town and in Stockbridge or at the state or federal level, how would you know advise anyone in your similar position to pursue those relationships, and what are the benefits of that?
Norton Moffatt: Relationships are everything, whether it's with elected officials and supporting the good work that they bring back to our communities, or it's our patrons, our donors, it's our local communities, it's our staff, our trustees.
People rally around ideas, and those ideas are fostered by good, strong relationships. I think that personal touch is very important. Being out in the community, supporting what's going on around us, certainly being connected to what our elected officials, both locally, statewide, nationally, are able to bring back to Berkshire County is very important, and it's fun because this is a people business, and that, from my experience, is really where the meaning and the reward comes in is building these relationships and a network all across the country, and in fact, globally.
Landes: Speaking of this being a people business, I love that concept because one of the most unique and compelling recurring events I've experienced at the museum are the citizenship ceremonies.
It's not lost on me this what you're communicating about what Rockwell represented, about transcending barriers, about optimism. Tell me about the process that brought the citizenship ceremonies to the Rockwell Museum, and then tell me about what it's like to steward that in an era where conversations around immigration have become so fraught.
Norton Moffatt: The naturalization citizenship ceremonies here at the museum are one of my favorite events, one of my favorite moments. If you look at Norman Rockwell's art and the art of illustration on the walls right around us, you'll see tremendous inclusion and representation of all the many people who have built this country.
The idea to be able to do a citizenship naturalization ceremony in the galleries, surrounded by the Four Freedoms, was just inspirational, and we were able to work with the Massachusetts National Bureau of Citizenship.
There was a time when most of these ceremonies took place either in Springfield or Boston, and in the larger cities. But we were able to work with our local representatives and with the county legal system because it requires a judge to actually swear in and host the citizenship ceremonies. And everybody was very inspired by the idea to have it here, within the galleries at the museum, so we've been hosting them for around 10 years.
There was a hiatus during the pandemic when it was difficult to gather, and certainly in such intimate spaces as the scale of our galleries here. And then there's been, I'd say, detours the last couple of years as the policies around immigration have changed federally, but we recently did host within the past year a ceremony. It was private and quiet. It wasn't as the family and friends of the citizens being sworn in, who usually are able to attend, and the general public were not allowed to be part of it. But we were able to see that citizenship was awarded to a new group of citizens in Berkshire County, and this is made possible by the immigration services, by the regional court system, and a judge who volunteers to actually hold court here in the galleries, and during that time, the museum actually serves as a courtroom.
It's very inspiring. People from all over the all over the world — often there'll be 17, 20 different countries and cultures who are putting roots down here in the Berkshires and becoming part of the fabric of this community.
Landes: On some level, it must be a frustrating contrast between the values of Rockwell and some of the attitudes of on the federal level towards immigration. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because it seems like what we're describing is a moment where one of the core tenets of Rockwell seems to be hitting or rubbing up on these larger federal takes on what it means to have a diverse society.
Norton Moffatt: I think we can be inspired by Rockwell's work.
If you look at a piece such as the Golden Rule, which grew out of an idea he created for the United Nations, where he had the original countries who founded first the League of Nations and eventually the United Nations, which has grown now to hundreds of countries.
You look at these core works in Rockwell's oeuvre, and you're inspired to realize that these are ideas that have come around again, and I think at a moment like this, where there is many differing opinions, and certainly on such an important topic of immigration, that Rockwell's artwork can inspire.
I think that always gives me hope that times change and times continue to evolve, and art's a very powerful tool in reminding us about ideas and inviting us to maybe learn more, to think more expansively, to visit the museum, maybe go away with some new insights.
That's what we've aimed to do with our summer exhibition here, with commemorating the 250th of America. We've chosen maybe a dozen themes around which to use both historical illustration and contemporary illustration and images of Rockwell's work as well, to remind us of what we hold in common, what we the sort of core values of our nation, even when there's different ideas and thought around how those should be illuminated.
Landes: 40 plus years at an institution — when you first took this job, did you think in your head, ‘this is where I'm going to lay my roots down’ and become almost part and parcel with the institution?
Norton Moffatt: I was thinking about what questions are you going to ask me today, and I thought, ‘he's going to ask me what was I thinking when I started 40 years ago.’
I think what inspired me then was the public affection for Rockwell's art, and that at the time, he did not hold that same critical acclaim in the art world by the art critics, by art historians.
Illustration was really viewed as a sort of sister art, but lesser art. It was so apparent in Rockwell's work that, first of all, he's a brilliant painter, a genius painter, and a great humanitarian, but it was undeniable to see the joy of people who were looking at his art and really experiencing it in person.
That was just infectious and inspirational for me, and that's where it all began with my leadership.
Over time, that was able to grow both beyond the Berkshires and nationally and globally, but also to create Rockwell as the centerpiece of American illustration art, and that created new frontiers, if you will, that the museum was able to work with more museums around the country with the many wonderful collections of illustration art that exist in libraries, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, corporate illustration collections, collections at colleges and universities, as well as at a handful of museums.
Now we have really a network, an alliance across the country with all of the museums who collect exhibit illustration art, and so it grew, and the opportunities grew, and I think the same central inspiration of how deeply this art touches people when they see it, and how illustration art is both a reflection of our society, but it also shapes our thinking, and so that's been a very inspiring career that grew over time, but was sparked by the brilliance of Rockwell's work.
Landes: So, to ask the obvious question: why now, and what do you feel like stepping away from this?
Norton Moffatt: There comes a time where change is necessary for sustainability for all organizations, and just felt like the timing was right in my life and in the institution's life.
We've achieved so much of what we set out to do, although we have lots of new ideas and aspirations that are and opportunities that are before us.
I have some increasing family obligations that I'll be attending to in my life, and it seemed like the right time to invite a new leader in, and really invite the generational turning that is vital for sustainability of any organization. New people coming up, enjoying the museum have grown up in a different world than I grew up in, and I think it's just very important so that organizations can continue to innovate and bring new ideas in, and that will happen with a new leader here. I'm very excited about that.
Landes: The emotional moment has been a huge part of your life. How are you preparing for that? What are you thinking about as you prepare for that transition?
Norton Moffatt: I would be less than honest if I didn't say it is an emotional time. It's one I'm very proud of and one I'm very one with.
I think about all the relationships I hold with people here at the museum, with our trustees, our patrons, colleagues all across the country, and I won't have that day-to-day work with those people. I know those relationships are built on strong foundations, and the connections will still be there. I'm so proud of this team and our board. I know that with fresh leadership and new ideas coming in, the museum will continue to do outstanding work, and that makes me feel very proud and happy.
Landes: If you had any great hope for either your legacy at the museum or the museum's future, what would that great hope, that highest aspiration, be?
Norton Moffatt: My hope would be that the museum continues to be successful, and that Norman Rockwell's art continues to touch people as deeply as it always has in his lifetime, and in the years since I and my colleagues have been leading this museum. I expect that will happen. I think the importance of continuing to be connected nationally and globally. Art can be a wonderful kind of diplomacy, and there's a lot this museum has to share and offer to inspire people, and I expect that that will continue.
Landes: Any message to the broader Berkshire community about the arts, about nonprofits, as you prepare to step down from this sector after again generational run — four decades doing this kind of work? What do you have to say to sort of that that broader part of this Berkshire culture?
Norton Moffatt: I want to say that I love this community and I love the Berkshires, and it has been so rewarding to work with a group of colleagues who are very collegial around the arts, but also the entire nonprofit community, and the citizens, the board members who support and are part of this web that we all weave together, to be able to contribute to a vibrant Berkshire County, vibrant communities, and I hope that that connectivity will continue. I expect it will. It's a very generous place in that regard.
I think we all understand when we're in a small regional rural community with a low population base, but has a very high visitation base, that working together is so important, and we've been able to work with our elected officials, work with our local town officials, as well as our state representatives and our federal representatives, who I think work very hard to make sure this sector is taken care of to the best that they can support all the many needs that are pressed upon government, but the tight community and network and collegiality is a very special quality of this region.
Landes: There’s this sense of regional inequity in Massachusetts that often this this region far from Boston, and sometimes, struggles to be fully heard or supported by the state government here in Massachusetts. From your perspective, as a representative of this nonprofit culture sector, is that something you've experienced, or does it sort of show itself in different ways that maybe most folks wouldn't observe?
Norton Moffatt: To some extent, I think that's what one makes of it, we have phenomenal representation from our Berkshire delegation in Boston. Our numbers are few, but they work collegially and regionally together.
The governor has generally always taken interest in Berkshire County. The governor of any party of any era, I think there's close ties because of the of Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood and our Boston ties and connection.
The Berkshires are a very important part of the state, even though we are low population relative to other parts of our Commonwealth. I continue to believe that that kind of connection and representation will always be strong for this region, and you have to also get out there.
Boston doesn't look very far away from where we sit in the Berkshires, but when you're in Boston looking west, somehow the drive looks twice as long home, and I think it's important to show up to be connected with the Massachusetts Cultural Council, with the different departments of the state, and certainly to stay close and connected with our Berkshire delegation, who represent us so beautifully.
