MFAH dives into history with ‘Norman Rockwell: American Freedom’ exhibit
The touring exhibition “Norman Rockwell: American Freedom” offers lessons in history and civility.
Opening Sunday in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Beck Building, the show is elegantly installed, familiar and relevant without being too provocative for families in search of holiday entertainment.
But are Rockwell’s iconic images great art in the vein of the canvases that hang next door in the shows “Monet to Picasso” and “Berthe Morisot”? No.
The beloved American illustrator’s work was a “negotiated” art, as Norman Rockwell Museum co-director and chief curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett said during a preview Thursday. While he was well aware of his fine art contemporaries, the Abstract Expressionists, the Prince of Charm inhabited a different realm as an illustrator for magazines whose editors dictated his final images. Rockwell’s works also were more influential, seen by millions of people, far more than the number who visited museums.
