Taroodeedoo road thetting on the great images Norman Rockwell painted that really created a National Concept of the four freedoms that made visible, tangible, and real the ideological concepts that president roosevelt expressed in addresse of the union in 1941. The freedom of speech everywhere in the world. Is freedom of every person to worship god in his own world. Erywhere in the from want,s freedom which translated means economic we securedngs, which to every nation a healthy peace inhabitantsr everywhere in the world. Fear,urth is freedom from which translated in the world through such ade point and in such a thorough will bethat no nation in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against anybody anywhere in the world. [applause] what people forget today is that the concept of four freedoms did not take immediate hold on the national psyche. A few artists made images of freedoms. Bute was talk of freedoms it did not caption the imagination in any way that people would be excited about until Norman Rockwell. His four paintings of the four freedoms encapsulated, made understandable and tangible the values of each of those freedoms and were arguably the most ofminent and Public Images domestic images of world war ii and unify the nation. The exhibition begins with the time of the new deal, the a littlen era, given sense of what america was like prior to world war ii, and then it goes straight into the war years with videos of fdrs four freedoms speech and reactions to it from other artists trying to encapsulate the four freedoms in art and other images of world war ii, following the introduction of fdrs date of the Union Address of 1941. We look at rockwells early were images about the common person joining the military and what military life was like. A more lighthearted approach, and then really the heart of the exhibition is rockwells wrestling with these concept of four freedoms, of coming up with imagery that would capture the ideals in a convincing manner and then the spread of them across the United States, first through magazines, then posters, then the war bond drive, and then ultimately leading through the end of world war ii. The show culminates with some of rockwells great and lesser known works that confront civil think,and reimagine, i the values of the nation. Finally, the Rockwell Museum organized some 40 artists work to be shown, work that was done can temporarily today. Work by Living Artists to reflect upon the value of the four freedoms to think about and to show a different context on how we might think of them today. Well, lets begin our tour. I would like to show you before we look at the four freedoms, i would like to show you the earliest images rockwell made of world war ii. He conceived a character named Willie Gillis, who is actually a 15yearold boy at the time, too young to enlist, but he created a series of paintings for the saturday evening post that were a lighthearted look at life in the military, one of his more famous ones is Willie Gillis receiving a care package. You can see he has received a box of goodies and he has made quite a few friends, and the friends have lined up, all looking at his package, and it became a lighthearted symbol of the military together, life on the base, training, this kind of thing. It would have been a cover for the saturday evening post. Today, sometimes the images change a little bit subsequent to their publishing on the post. I can show you in this on what i mean, but, first, let me it is important for us to know that these images, for rockwell, were valuable as photographs to go on covers of the magazine. The pictures themselves were not intended for museum use, for sale, or these kinds of things as we think about today in the art world. They were images to be photographed and he was paid for the photograph of the image, the cover, and they gave the painting back to him after he did it, so rockwell would paint the picture. And after they had been sometimeslater on, the paintings themselves would have been given away or sold to others. This one, im pretty sure was sold to someone else and i can show you why. If you look at the background, and actually look at the hands, this is magnificent painting. This is an artist who has command of his craft and can reproduce the visual imagery of a meticulous manner. Rockwell, his brush and his reproductive skills, or as good as a photograph, sometimes better. If you look back, you can see the background gets murky. You look around, and all of a sudden, a great artist like this has sprayed paint on the sleeve of his image. Rockwell did not do that. Somebody did it later when they painted the background and took out the lines from the saturday evening post. There are other images of Willie Gillis. This one was never published. Willie, the young recruit, remember he was too young to enlist but posed for the pictures, the rabbits foot for good luck so you know who he is, looking starry eyed and naively eating, citizens are smoking, sitting around, the veterans of war. It was actually thought of two harsh contrast and was not pup too harsh a contrast and not published. This painting to the site is one of the better Willie Gillis images and more poignant. Worship, in a place of with military superiors in front and behind, thinking about what is to come. The painting here, war news, was painted by rockwell late in 1944 and is an image of people in small town america listening to their news, getting their news, from the newspaper and the radio in the back. It is really a magnificent composition and that the artist takes you through the counter to this group of people, listening, eyes, allears, hands, coming together. We know from a sketch that the newspaper was to have on its er a headline that says war plans for france. So there was a potential invasion of france being talked about prior to dday on the areo, and the figures here gathering the news, listening to the news, as you would have, and showing the concern of people at home about the war abroad. This was actually not a cover and was not submitted to the saturday evening post because rockwell considered it to settle and too hard for people to understand and read. He made another picture about the radio elsewhere in the exhibition. Image, a poster, is the only image that rockwell painted of actual combat taking place. Rockwell was uncomfortable with the concept of painting war and action. That was not really what he did. What he did in this one, showing the bullets spend, it was a poster to rally the factory excite the people on the home front to support the war effort, and this was an image meant to show the bullets are needed and this fighting figure still with all the details of rockwell with the realistic imagery and all of this, very cleverly covers his face so that the fighter is any man fighting for the values of the nation. Norman rockwells quest to paint the four freedoms actually began in failure. He made a series of sketches and came to washington, d. C. , and presented them at the office of war information. The leadership at the time rejected the idea and send him away without a commission to freedoms. Evelts four on his trip home, he stopped in philadelphia and met with his editors at the saturday evening post, who embraced the idea and instructed rockwell to go home, not to work on other features, to focus on the four freedoms. He was given three months to do the four freedoms and it took him seven to conceive and paint them once he began. The First Painting he worked on, the one that gave him the inspiration for the series, was freedom of speech, and as rockwell recalls in his biography, he was struggling, as rockwell always did, struggling to come up with a concept and idea of how he would actually embody an abstract idea such as freedom of speech, and he said he woke up one night and townled a meeting in the of arlington where he lived at the time, a town hall meeting and debate that took place in arlington about whether or not to rebuild the school that had recently burned down or whether their children would be bused to the next district and taxes would be saved. Whenmembered an incident his neighbor rose to oppose the idea of building the new school, and what he remembered is the , listening meeting respectfully, hearing the point of view, and then, either way, the gentleman lost the vote. The town voted to enact the tax and to borrow 80,000 to build the new school house, so this was a dissenting voice. Rockwell data series of studies afterwards and woke up early and started sketching and creating images. We have some of his sketches showing rockwell wrestling with the various ways he could articulate this image, this idea of freedom of speech and what he remembers, and over a series of images, he came with the idea of essentially putting a blackboard in the background, a neutral background, so that the speaker would stand tall amongst a group of people who were listening, holding the annual report of the town and agenda of the meeting, the agenda of the taxes. Earsee eyes looking and emphasized because freedom of speech is about the obligation to listen and respectful listening, so rockwell created this image that showed everyone paying respect and proper attention. By the way, that is an image of Norman Rockwell in the far corner, also showing his ears and eyes, ascending to the speech. Freedom of religion is probably the most difficult image that rockwell had to create because how often do people of different religions come together in a place of worship . People worshiped separately, each in their own place of worship, so rockwell created kind of a composition of humanity of different faiths coming together, all praying to a common god. Dictatesrding to the of his own conscious. Freedom from want, rockwell painted during thanksgiving. Are two family members, his mother and his wife, the rest are neighbors and friends that rockwell posed to create an American Family celebrating thanksgiving. Of white and any masterwork of still life. Not the most lavish still life you would see, rather sparse except for the and normas turkey that is going to be there, and the figures gathering here, much like the saints would be gathered in a renaissance painting on each side, and the centerpiece gathering you suggest aith i would divinelight looking in through the windows and the beautifully show lifeaperies that against the white tablecloth, against clear glasses, showing a spotless, clean, and unmessy table, showing americans coming together to celebrate thanksgiving in good cheer and family unity. A concept worth preserving, worth fighting for. And freedom from fear, we have a mother and father tucking in the two children. Bombings,per has horror, and references. Probably the bombings of london, the london blitz, world war ii. If you look around the edges of this scene of serenity and peace, you look around the edges referencee doll, a possibly to a body of war, and the light in the back, to me, references the kind of orange glow of the fire bomb in the back. It is one of the more subtle images that shows the images of horror overseas that references threat to the the future generations. As i said before, the paintings of rockwell were not the images that americans sought. If you follow me, i can show you have comecans would to learn about rockwells four freedoms through images from the saturday evening post. From february through april every other week, a one of rockwells images appeared with a fullpage spread with an essay by a writer of their interpretation of freedom of speech or freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. The saturday evening post circulated to millions of people , so americans would have seen these images, much like americans today would have seen them on a television and would have talked about it in their community. Some of these essays are really quite poignant. The freedom of worship, one of the more difficult, abstract pictures in the series, actually has a magnificent essay by the writer will durrant. I will read a couple of passages man first from animal and two things, he laughs and he prays, but the mark of a man is that he beats his head against the riddle of life knows his infinite weakness of body and mind, lifts up his heart to hidden presence and power and finds in his face a beacon of heart rendering hope, a pillar of strength or his fragile decency. The essay ends and it is wonderful. If our sons and brothers accomplish this by their toil and suffering, they can carry to all mankind the boon and stimulus of an ordered liberty the will be an achievement size of which all the triumphs of alexander, caesar, and napoleon will be a little thing. To that purpose, we are offering toir youth and their blood that purpose and to whom we others regretting that we cannot stand beside them, dedicate the remainder of our lives. Americans saw these, read about them, and in the following month, april of 1943, there was a war bomb drive, so these images, having been rejected initially as sketches by the office of war information, became embraced by the federal war bomb drive and the images were adopted as the symbols for the second bond drive, and the concept was that americans would invest, pay money for a bond that would mature in a number of years. It was about 18, and in 10 years, the bond would pay you back 25. The concept was, the idea was that they needed the nation to come together quickly to raise and tods for munitions acquit the nation soldiers appropriately. Famous movies most stars leave the capital to help the government sell war bonds. Irene dunn, Ronald Coleman all part of a contingent of some 50 screen celebrities giving their time and talents to aid the national war effort. And the second war bond drive, the four freedoms were adopted as images of the bond drive and there was a Publicity Campaign that went to 17 different cities starting in washington, d. C. And rockwell came to the Department Store in d. C. And they showed off the posters and they printed in the millions duplicate sets of the four freedoms. A set of four smaller images that were given to you when you bought the bonds. So you bought a bond you received images of the four freedoms to put up in your home. The large posters would have been sent around the country in post offices, schools and elsewhere to rally the nation to buy war bonds so the dissemination of this image in the spring of 1943 was pervasive and was seen as the face of the war effort at that time. Norman rockwell was trained as an illustrator. He studied in the Art Student League in new york and learned the basics of painting and drawing the human body and mastered his craft essentially with the skill of being able to recreate in drawings or paintings as accurately and realistically as a camera might. Although rockwell said in his autobiography that he sometimes looked at the world as a little too messy and not as ideal as he would like it to be and therefore he made it more ideal in his paintings. He became extraordinarily well known through his art, first working for the boy scouts and then working for magazines, the great one being the saturday evening post. As an artist who appeared on cover of the post millions of people would see his art, far more than were he an artist that was making paintings for a wealthy patron or a museum. He was a very popular artist and chronicled American Life from really the teens through the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, up until the early 1970s. Where this exhibition begins is in the early 1930s. Theres an image here from the saturday evening post cover of returning home from vacation a year after the stock market crash of 1929. So while times were bad there was a market downturn it was not the depression yet. So rockwell could look at life in still a very lighthearted way. This is the vacation from which you need a vacation. The family returned home exhausted. The little frog coming out of the childs box. , theastily packed suitcase camera, shoes untied. Worn out with signs about a wonderful vacation. It is something Many Americans could relate to, could see a little bit of their own lives in the cover of the saturday evening post which made the magazine such a welcoming when the mail arrived and the post was delivered, people would see something they would relate to at the time. Next to this picture is another painting of a vacation from 1938 , but it is quite different. Posters of vacations, exotic ports of call, paris, mountains, vacations. And now, six years into the depression, a salesperson with no customers. Bored, unsuccessful. This was the vacation in america in the late 1930s as the ravages of the depression, unemployment or spreading throughout the nation. A vacation meant something quite different. Remember the painting i showed you of the gentlemen around the lunch counter that were listening to the radio . Following that painting, rockwell painted this. A gentleman listening to the radio by himself in his home trying to hear the news. It is a much more personal image than the gentlemen at the lunch counter. I will show you why. First, look at his hand trying to dial in and you can imagine the static on the radio trying to get the sound clear so he can hear the messages coming through the radio. On his lap you can see the father with a map of france, england. A map of europe. The channel with the direction that he understands the military forces to be taking and up above him, eisenhower and mcarthur. Three stars and three photographs from the navy, the army, and the air force. Three sons of the man. You see the clues around maps and the like. You realize he is trying to track his sons wouldat be making on the waterfront, each deployed in different areas , and you can see the map behind, american flags have been pinned on to the map. We can only presume they are the locations he believes his sons are fighting in. The painting by the way was later this was a saturday evening post picture and later given away to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle in western massachusetts. So what rockwell did is he repainted the newspaper on the ground as the Berkshire Eagle and dedicated it to the staff to his friend and staff of the Berkshire Eagle. Another instance where the image would have been photographed, circulated in magazine form, the actual painting residing with the artist, rockwell himself, given away to a friend. Just at the end as world war ii ended, thanksgiving 1945 he made this image of the returning soldier with his mother for the thanksgiving issue of the magazine sitting on a chair that is a little too small for him, probably his boyhood chair, wearing civilian shoes but his military uniform peeling potatoes as people remember k. P. And peeling potatoes and the like but doing it in a joyous way of a homecoming, and it was meant to be an image of something to be truly thankful. Peoples images of Norman Rockwell and the saturday evening post the americana. Even a bit kitsch sometimes. People think about that and do not always know the late paintings of his career after he left the post. In 1961, the post was bought out. There was a change in management and rockwell left and no longer had to conform to the standards, strictures, and expectations of the saturday evening post. He could work on images that he wanted to do, and eventually wound up with look magazine, the rival to life magazine that was showing america as it were primarily with photographs. But in 1964, he made an image that has come to be quite famous called the problem we all live with. It was painted in 1963 reflecting upon an incident in 1960 of ruby bridges, the first little girl who was brought to an all white school as new orleans was segregated. The occasion of this painting was the 10th anniversary of brown versus the board of education, the Supreme Court case that mandated integration into the schools and declared separate but equal was not sufficient in the United States. However, it was understood that in many communities the foot dragging, the delays, lack of care of leadership of communities was delaying the integration of these schools and rockwell, troubled by that, in the 10th anniversary looked back, reached back for this image of ruby bridges and reimagined it based on photographs, documents of the time and created his own image that was starkly different in artistic ways from the images you would have seen in the photograph. The photograph showed the marshals who had to escort her from her home to the school bringing her into this all white school, would have seen them all together walking as a group up the steps to the school. In this case, he has removed the heads of the marshals and only showed them as figures of authority marching the first grader off to school, ruby bridges. He has made her elegantly dressed. And in fact, rockwell commissioned a resident of his town in massachusetts to make a new dress in white for his model for this image so that she was clean and oh, by the way notice in her book that she holds stars on the book referenced to the american flag. Originally in the drawings and it is a vile, vile background of this picture by the way, the tomatoes being thrown, the vile graffiti here. K. K. K. It is a horrid image and it was a horrid scene at the time when protesters and basically angry mobs were at the side of the roads screaming at the girl as she was going, the poor girl, going to school at the time. Rockwell was so troubled by this in his original image he had ruby on this side and she couldnt be in the middle because it was a twopage magazine spread. So the crease of the magazine was in the middle and rockwell decided to move her to the front so that the little girl was leading the marshals as opposed to the marshals leading the girl. Ruby bridges still lives in new orleans, has a foundation and is a trustee of the Norman Rockwell museum. This painting, i should add, was also brought to the white house. President obama asked for this painting and had it in the white house and had ruby bridges come to the white house, and she showed president obama the image. I think it is fair to say if it had not been for you guys, i might not be here and we wouldnt be looking at this together. Just having him say that meant a lot to me and always has to be Standing Shoulder to shoulder with history and viewing history must just once in a lifetime. 1965, rockwell wanted to reproduce for the magazine a gruesome killing of three students who went to mississippi ,hey were killed by klansmen but in his drawings for the image, rockwell focused on the gore and the assailants. In his final image, he chose to make them in shadows. So you could not see the real perpetrators of the crime, the klansmen who killed the students, but you saw the shadows, as ghouls, much in the way the ghouls of gloria have orwn evil ghouls of goya the great artists have shown evil. This is humanitys evil trying to wipe out good. Rockwell was very conflicted about the vietnam war. By the news he 1965, 1960 6, 19 67. At one point, he was 1965, 1966, 1967. Commissionedhe was to do an image for the marines and decided not to. In going through his thoughts, he came up with this image called the right to know, recognizing the people have the obligation to understand the reasons for which the nation goes through wars. You see the empty chair. The chair of authority. And people have come, people of american walks life, young and old, in suits, himself hasockwell come to ask. Andink in making it plain not locating it in something as specific as congress with a microphone or with a personal air, he has made this a more she has made it a more symbolic, more ubiquitous rite rather than an incident ubiquitous right rather than an incident. The right to know would be something rockwell would think about. As people think about rockwell as the typical American Family and the like, as he grew more mature, rockwell created a series of paintings and images bringing together diverse people. In this case, a study of the united nations, russia, the united kingdom, the United States as political figures, but surrounded by people from the world. In image a gandhi youre there, but people from all inions brought together thought, contemplation, expectation, hope, desire. Peoples of the world could come together. We see this thing throughout we see this theme throughout life. Lls as he reflected on the golden the dohe common theme of unto others as you would have them do unto you. , thought about an wayican middle class white of life, was someone whos celebrated cultures, celebrated diversity more than we think of him as. In this exhibition, we have carried that the name forward beyond rockwells lifetime. The Rockwell Museum, in aganizing the show, put out call for artists to wish to reflect the theme of freedom in America Today. Were received. Es and the jury selected works by some 40 artists to reflect upon freedoms and freedom in America Today, and so the show ends with these images that people can go by and see modern takes on rockwell. Pops peterson, who lives very near the Rockwell Museum, obviously freedom from fear, except the newspaper has changed to i cant breathe. You have other images of freedom of speech today. Accusing, pointing. Information. Fake, fake, fake news. ,nd people gathering their news as they wish, from sources they wish. We see in the images that have been submitted by the artists much greater diversity of subjects. Black, white, from diverse creeds, freedom of speech and liberty and all national values, with religious figures from around the world, all coming together. Just as part of the exhibition, this has been extremely popular with guests, and particularly younger people who sometimes see the freedom of expression as expressed in the 1940s sometimes limiting, sometimes monolithic. And now understanding freedom in America Today is something that whattally important from perspective someone comes from, to what extent they receive such freedoms. And so you can go through this as part of the exhibition and see various themes of different people and inhibitors of liberties such as the intrusiveness of electronics and surveillance that interpeoples homes. Enter peoples homes. Religious figures. Gandhi, the dalai lama, and others, a part of the same family. An ideal like the golden role, and yet more diverse the yet morele, and diverse, more inclusive, perhaps, from the perspective of todays artists, todays viewers. Certainly, some images of resistance and a reminder that sometimes the nation has fallen short of its ideals. In an erarful image of sometimes religious and cultural intolerance. The student body, when the ll, theys are most fu tend to be a p or reflecting on what contemporary art 10 to be up here or reflecting on what content free artists reflecting on what the areemporary artists showing. So, i have found that this is an exhibition that has brought great diverse city to the museum. People throughout washington, d. C. , tourists, certainly our academic community, professors, and students at George Washington university. I am a trained art historian from a background in renaissance baroque art, monuments of the some 20th9th and century. I had actually written a book on the iwo jima monument, so i knew quite a bit about the war bond drive and new rockwells art. I knew howt know skillful he was as an artist. I knew his ability to recreate the visual that is extraordinary, as good as most artists alive for ever lived perhaps, but its imagery was ever thought to be a little fluffy, a little to americana. Some people would have called a sch. Ch called it kit but when you see him wrestle with the serious issues of america, when he had to get away from the softer side of American Life as seen in the saturday evening post, but instead look at the perils of the nation and the perils of the world, he became much more serious and was an artist of much more depth and thought than i originally thought, with the biases i brought to this show. The late rockwell, rockwell from person, i think, a profound thought he looked at the nations execution or living up to its values and found sometimes the nation fell short looke had the courage to at segregation of schools, segregation of housing, racial in theut also the hope united nations, the peace corps, religions of the world coming together. He was an artist who reflected, i think with thoughtfulness and profundity, the american condition, and maybe as an artist, a lot of times people talk about art being not just an image, but a mirror and how the mirror reflects society and rockwell was, for better or worse, reflection on the american psyche. Ideals is a traveling exhibit with stops in houston and finally at the Norman Rockwell museum in stockbridge, massachusetts, where it was organized. You can watch this and all American History tv programs online at www. Cspan. Org hi story. American history tv is on social media. Follow us cspanhistory. Tonight on lectures in history, we visited the classroom of a professor examining the declaration of independence. Says, secure these rights governments are instituted among men to derive their just powers the consent of the governed. Right . Just stop and think about what that means. You can actually take this one theh, but one clause of larger sentence and break it down into its component parts. So what is the third truth what does the third truth mean . Well, the first thing it means, the first thing it says, quite clearly, is that the purpose of government is to protect rights. It does not say the purpose of ends good is to make or virtuous. It does not save the purpose of government is to make all men equal or the same. It says that the purpose is to protect rights. And what rights does it mean . It means the rights contained in the second selfevident truth, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which includes the right to property. So, thats it. Solehat creates if the purpose of government is to protect rights, that means by definition, a very limited kind of government and that takes us then to the second part of the third truth, which is governments are necessary to secure rights. Well, the first thing to note here is the american Founding Fathers were not anarchists. Right . They believed there is a legitimate role for government to play in a free society. Learn more about the preamble of the declaration of independence tonight on cspans American History tv. University of washington professor Margaret Omara discusses her book. Of bighave the biggest government programs. You have the space race. You have what eisenhower memorably labeled the militaryindustrial complex. That becomes the foundation of this entrepreneurial flywheel of incredible innovation and theate Wealth Creation and industry that considered itself, the industry that built itself actuallyn, that government has become almost invisible to many of the people in silicon valley, the creators of these companies, technologies, they think there is no role, but there is and thats part of the magic, actually. Its government out of sight. Sunday night at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. Every july for the last 25 years, the Gettysburg Anniversary Committee has hosted a civil war battle reenactment reflecting camp life. We spoke to reenactors about the taurean era marriage expectations and brothels. Wasn the civil war, which smack in the middle of a victorian period, there were very little choices for women