Author and illustration and design historian Steven Heller will explore how graphic symbols through time endure and influence life—for good and evil—for generations. A nuanced examination of the most powerful symbol was examined in his recent book, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate. Steven Heller has written extensively on and design/illustration. For thirty-three years he was art director at The New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for many years with the New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department and writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review. He also writes The Daily Heller for Print magazine.

Throughout history, illustrators and cartoonists have responded to the world’s challenges and upheavals with brilliance and ferocity. Navigating the technical and distributive realities of their times, artists create potent visual symbols and narratives that establish new visual metaphors and repurpose old ones, sometimes borrowing conventions from other media.

Discuss the legacy of the Four Freedoms with illustrators, authors, and scholars who will share perspectives on historical and contemporary notions of freedom, and on the role of imagery to shape public perception, decision-making, and cultural narratives.

Franklin D. Roosevelt made clear that the Four Freedoms were “no vision of a distant millennium.” Their odyssey did not end with FDR, nor with Rockwell. Eleanor Roosevelt, who championed the late president’s legacy, ceaselessly touted the Four Freedoms as an appropriate summation of democracy and human rights. Enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Four Freedoms are a testament that arose from the ashes of war to affirm the precious nature of freedom everywhere in the world; these aspirational ideals have continued to play a prominent role in national and international thought.

Discuss the legacy of the Four Freedoms with illustrators, authors, and scholars who will share perspectives on historical and contemporary notions of freedom, and on the role of imagery to shape public perception, decision-making, and cultural narratives.