Saturday, November 13, 2010

Rockwell and the Movies

What do George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have in common with millions of Scouts and Scouters? These great American filmmakers both love and admire the work of Norman Rockwell, who spent decades illustrating stories and painting covers for Boys’ Life and the annual Brown & Bigelow Boy Scouts calendars.


Rockwell's Spirit of America (1929) represents just one artistic highlight of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition and catalog.


Of course, when your movies have brought in billions of dollars, you can do more than just admire an artist: Lucas and Spielberg have long been major collectors of Rockwell’s work.
Now you can see a sizable portion of those collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. The filmmakers, who teamed up on the popular Indiana Jones series, have aligned again—this time to arrange the loan of 57 of their Rockwell paintings and drawings for an exhibition that opened in July.




For more, go here.