The Norman Rockwell Museum is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the American painter’s iconic Four Freedoms series on Saturday.
The afternoon celebration of Rockwell’s four oil paintings from 1943 will explore the political and sociological context in which they were created. Stephanie Plunkett is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
“From 1 to 4 we’ll have a series of events, first starting at 1 o’clock with a talk about Rockwell, Roosevelt, and the Four Freedoms by Professor James Kimble of Seton Hall University,” she told WAMC.
“Well the Four Freedoms refer to FDR’s 1941 Four Freedoms speech — he lists them to his audience, to Congress, as well as to the nation — freedom of worship, freedom of expression, freedom from want, and freedom from fear,” said Kimble. He says the speech came in the context of a chaotic world, with America’s involvement in World War Two looming. Rockwell, along with dozens of other artists, was tasked with making effective visual explanations of the speech to use during the war effort.
“And I’m perfectly comfortable accepting phenomena like the Four Freedoms as being a kind of propaganda," Kimble told WAMC. "It’s a responsive propaganda — you know, at the time, you had propaganda from the Nazis that was dehumanizing and demonizing individuals, but here you have a kind of propaganda that’s uplifting, that’s raising a standard that all of us should try to aspire to.”
Another speaker at the event will explore the paintings as propaganda in contrast to another world power.
“We’ll have a very interesting talk by Natalia Smirnova, who’s an assistant professor at University of Connecticut in Storrs," said Plunkett, "and she will be looking at the World War Two period through the lens of Russian posters.”
Smirnova compared Rockwell’s visual message to that of the Soviet state’s media campaign during the war.
“Here in Norman Rockwell, it’s more like peace — we’re to really trying to preserve the peace and the dinner and our opportunity to speak at a meeting," Smirnova told WAMC, "and in the Soviet thing, we can see more tanks in the background, we see women harvesting the grain to the last drop. Also there is a motherland who is calling for you to go to the front.”
In addition to the talks, there will be a film screening, dance, and song.
“Performer Wes Buckley will be singing the songs of Woody Guthrie,” said Plunkett.
Buckley is a working artist and educator who lives in Pittsfield.
“Woody’s imagery and his storytelling and his lyric, for me, they’re kind of paintings," he told WAMC. "They’re like Rockwell paintings, and so I see them from a similar era, from a similar time, telling a similar story about the country.”
The 75th anniversary celebration of the Four Freedoms begins at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.
