Page 76 - BusinessWest April 27, 2026

Rockwell >>Continued from page 21
legacy — engaging critically with the past and
imagining possible futures — circulating images
faster and more widely than ever through digital
platforms.”
Among the items assembled from the muse-
um’s extensive holdings (some 30,000 works
representing 350 illustrators), as well as loans
from institutions and private collections world-
wide, are James Montgomery Flagg’s “Uncle
Sam Wants You for the U.S. Army” and How-
ard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” posters, as well as
Rockwell’s portrayals of American presidents
and politicans such as Dwight Eisenhower, John
F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ronald Rea-
gan, said Lord, adding that the goal is to blend
some familiar works with others that visitors
have likely not seen before.
“Two of the things I wanted to explore with
this exhibit are history and myth, which is to say
pictures that tell us about the actual history, and
then pictures that are so famous — like ‘Uncle
Sam Wants You’ — that they’ve taken on this
kind of mythical status, and in some ways, that
often means we don’t think about them as deep-
ly as we might; we see them, and we say, ‘we’ve
seen that, we recognize that.’”
“A lot of the conversations we have
today about our own identity in the
world — about how other countries
view us and how we view ourselves
— are not new discussions.”
And while the exhibit, which will occupy
nearly all of the museum’s exhibition space, was
created to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday,
there is another purpose as well, said Lord,
adding that the times call for a collection of
works that show that this complicated era in the
nation’s history is not without precedent.
“When I put together an exhibit, I like to ask
the question, ‘why this exhibit now?’” he told
BusinessWest. “Obviously, there’s an anniversa-
ry, but that’s not the only reason for this to have
relevance right now.
“No matter where you sit on the political
spectrum, I think everyone would agree that
this is a very complicated moment for our own
identity in the world,” he went on. “I always like
to think that it can be somewhat unsettling to
think that this is an unprecedented moment,
and I also like to think about how there might
be a precedent for this. A lot of the conversa-
tions we have today about our own identity in
the world — about how other countries view
us and how we view ourselves — are not new
discussions.”
Image makers have wrestled with many of
these identity crises from the very beginning,
he continued, adding that this is one of many
things he expects visitors will take away from
an exhibit that offers both a visual journey
through American history and a timely reflec-
tion on the enduring power of pictures to shape
national identity. BW
—George O’Brien
“American Stories, from
Revolution to Rockwell”
includes, above,
Norman Rockwell’s
“Ben Franklin’s
Sesquicentennial”
(cover illustration for
the Saturday Evening
Post, May 29, 1926),
and J. Howard Miller’s
“We Can Do It!”
(1942, Illustration for
Westinghouse Electric
& Manufacturing Co.;
photo lithograph on
paper).
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