Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont explores how America’s beloved illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894 1978) crafted an idealized vision of Vermont-nostalgic, resilient, and mythic-during his most prolific years in Arlington (1939 1953). In these works, Rockwell offered a nation battered by the Great Depression and World War II a reassuring image of American life: orderly, self-reliant, and picturesque. Through paintings and illustrations, Rockwell captured not simply scenes of New England life, but a deeply rooted ethos-one in which democratic community, moral clarity, and quiet individualism flourished. This book, and the accompanying exhibition, situates Rockwell’s Vermont years within a broader creative milieu, highlighting the Arlington artist circle that included Mead Schaeffer (1898 1980), John Atherton (1900 1952), and Gene Pelham (1909 2004)- all informally enticed to Arlington, Vermont. Together, they helped define a cultural moment in which Vermont was mythologized as democracy’s granite-strong refuge. Even Rockwell’s orchestrated friendship with Anna Mary ‘Grandma’ Moses (1860 1961) was part of a wider crafting of New England as both authentic and marketable-where artists and audiences alike found a form of moral anchorage. Featuring two newly acquired Rockwell paintings to Shelburne Museum celebrating Vermont’s granite industry-long regarded as the state’s ‘backbone’-Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont examines not only the imagery but the careful mythmaking that made Vermont central to Rockwell’s enduring vision of America. Today, Rockwell’s work is housed in major museums across the country, a testament to his profound influence as an artist. This book features works from the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Fleming Museum of Art, VT; Norman Rockwell Museum, MA; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, CA; Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Lyman Orton Collection; Bennington Museum; Whitney Museum of Art.
