The Land of Enchantment: Exploring the Norman Rockwell Museum

Did you know the Library owns an original Norman Rockwell painting? This treasured piece of art is now on view in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge MA? Barbara Davis, New Rochelle City Historian and former NRPL Community Relations Coordinator, recently visited the museum and shares this illustrated brief with us:

If you have an opportunity to travel to the Berkshires, be sure to visit the museum to see NRPL’s magnificent painting, Land of Enchantment, prominently on display in the exhibit, Real and Imagined: Fantastical Rockwell. (It will return to its permanent home, above the desk in the Children’s Room at the main library, once the exhibit concludes on October 30, 2021.) 

The works of four other (former) New Rochelle artists – all members of the New Rochelle Art Association – are also on view! They are part of the corresponding exhibit, Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration.

 

"The Other Side" by Dean Cornwell with exhibit label at the start of the "Enchanted" exhibit.

"Vampire Girl" by Coles Phillips with exhibit label

"Pan" by J.C. Leyendecker with exhibit label

"The Submarine Menace Again!" by Orson Lowell with exhibit label

Never been to the Norman Rockwell Museum? You can meet many of his New Rochelle models there, as they are featured on the covers of Saturday Evening Post Magazines exhibited on the museum’s lower level. This space also features a video on the life of Norman Rockwell which, regrettably, omits the fact that he came into prominence while working and living in New Rochelle. He was an active member of our community for over 25 years, from 1913 – 1939.

And – he was a great supporter of New Rochelle’s extraordinary history, as evidenced in this letter found in NRPL’s archives.