April 3, 1993: Norman
Rockwell Museum opens at its new site in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Art has been a part of civilization for thousands of years
if cave drawings are any indication. And, like other cultural elements such as
music and dance, art has developed over the centuries. One of the favorite
American artists was Norman Rockwell. He spent the last twenty-five years of
his life in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and donated his studio to the city for a
museum. The studio is kept in its original state, although it has been moved to
the thirty+ acre site that the museum now occupies. Visitors are treated not
just to original Rockwell paintings, but to many of his sketches and drawings
as well.
People are attracted to Rockwell’s work because of the connection
they feel to his subjects. He captured small town America and his pictures tell
stories. His most famous are a series of four “freedom” pictures: freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
freedom from fear and freedom from want.
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In my contribution to The Pony Express Romance Collection, A PLACE TO BELONG, Abigail has neither
studio nor paints, but draws the Express riders and scenes around the ranch.
She treasures her mother’s sketchbook, with its own story, believing one of the
images is of the home left behind before her parents were killed when she was
six years old. Now, at nineteen, the sketchbook has become a connection to her
mother and feeds her dream to return to the house in the book, much like
Rockwell’s artwork feeds our nostalgia for a by-gone era.
Barbara Tifft Blakey is the developer of Total Language
Plus, a literature-inspired language arts program used by private Christian
schools and homeschoolers for over twenty years. She writes inspirational
historical fiction from her tree-surrounded home in the Pacific Northwest.
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