Visits to college classrooms, museums, and historic places. Exploring our nations past every weekend on cspan3. I am the director of the George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum here on the campus of George Washington university in the heart of washington, d. C. Four freedomss exhibition celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Norman Rockwell museum, the 75th dday, and of putting on the rose the great images Norman Rockwell painted the created a National Concept of the four freedoms that made visible, tangible, and real the ideological concepts president roosevelt expressed in the state of the Union Address in 1941. [newsreel video] pres. Roosevelt the first is freedom of speech and expression anywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship god in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which translated into world terms means economic , understandings which will nation, ar every healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world. [thundering applause] john 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, there was talk of freedoms, but it did not capture the imagination in any way people would be excited about until Norman Rockwell. Rockwells four paintings of the freedoms encapsulated, made understandable and tangible the values of each of those freedoms and were arguably the most prominent and Public Images of domestic images of world war ii and unified the nation. The exhibition begins with some early rockwell paintings at the time of the new deal, the depression era, giving a little sense of what america was like prior to world war ii. Then it goes straight into the war years with videos of fdrs four freedoms speech and some reactions to it by other artists trying to encapsulate the four freedoms in art and other images of world war ii, following the introduction of fdrs state of the Union Address of 1941. We look at some of rockwells images. R images that were 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 trying to come up with the imagery that would capture the ideals in a convincing manner, and then the spread of those images across the United States. First through magazines, then posters, then the war bond drive, and then ultimately leading toward the end of world war ii. The show culminates with some of rockwells great and lesser known works that confront civil rights and reimagine, i think, the values of the nation. Finally, as a coda to the exhibition, 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 them 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 images, paintings posthe saturday evening 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. It became kind of 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 one exactly what i mean. First, 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 retained the picture, and after they had been published later on, sometimes the paintings themselves would have been given away or sold to others. This one, i am 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 in a meticulous manner. Rockwell, his brush and his reproductive skills, were as good as a photograph, sometimes better. If you look back, you see the background gets murky. You look around, and all of a sudden, a great painter like this has sprayed some paint on the sleeve of his image. Rockwell didnt 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 for theut posing pictures, the rabbits foot for good luck. Willie gillis, so you know who he is, looking starry eyed and naively as these citizens are eating, smoking, sitting around, the veterans of war. It was actually thought of as a little bit too harsh a contrast and was not published in the saturday evening post. This painting to the side is one of the better Willie Gillis images, one of the more poignant ones. Willie is in a place of worship, 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 a newspaper and the radio in the back. Its really a magnificent composition in that the artist we know from a sketch that the newspaper was to have on its cover a headline that says, war plans for france. So there was a potential invasion of france being talked about prior to dday on the radio, and the figures here are 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 too subtle and too hard for people to understand and read. He made another picture about the radio elsewhere in the exhibition. This image, a poster, is the only image that rockwell painted of actual combat taking place. Rockwell was uncomfortable with the concept of eating war in action. That was not really what he did. But he did this one showing the bullets being spent lets give him enough and on time. It was a poster to rally the factory workers, to excite the people on the home front to support the war effort, and this was an image meant to show the bullets are needed. This fighting figure still with all the details of rockwell the realistic imagery and all of this cleverly covers his face so that the fighter is an everyman, an anyman, 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 sent him away without a commission to paint roosevelts four freedoms. On his trip home, however, 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, but 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 the pictures once he began. The First Painting he worked on, the one that gave him the inspiration for the series, was freedom of speech. As rockwell recalls in his biography, he woke up, he was struggling, as rockwell always did, struggling to come up with a concept. An idea of how he would actually embody an abstract idea such as freedom of speech, and he said, he woke up one night and recalled a meeting in the town of arlington where he lived at the time, a town hall meeting and a debate that took place in arlington about whether or not to rebuild the school that had recently burned down or whether the children would be bussed to the next district and taxes would be saved. He remembered an incident when his neighbor rose to oppose the idea of building the new school, and what he remembered is the rest of the meeting, listening respectfully, hearing the point of view, and then, by the way, the gentleman lost the vote. The town voted to enact the tax and to borrow 80,000 to build the new schoolhouse, so this was a dissenting voice. Rockwell made a series of studies afterwards. He woke up in the morning, very early and started sketching and , creating images. We have some of his sketches showing rockwell wrestling with the various ways that he could articulate this image, this idea of freedom of speech, and what he remembers. 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 the agenda of the meeting, the agenda of the taxes. You see eyes looking. Ears 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. Oh, and by the way, that is an image of Norman Rockwell in the far corner, also showing his ears and eyes listening 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 worship separately, each in their own place of worship, and so rockwell created kind of a composition of humanity together. Of different faiths coming together, all praying to a common god. Each according to the dictates of his own conscious. Freedom from want, rockwell painted during thanksgiving. There 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. Its really a symphony of white, and a masterwork of still life. Water glasses, not the most lavish dutch still life you might see, rather sparse, except for the enormous turkey that is going to be there. The figures gathering here, much like the saints would be gathered in a renaissance painting, on each side, and the centerpiece gathering you , i wouldwith suggest, kind of a divine light looking in through the windows and the beautifullypainted draperies that show white against white, against the white tablecloth, against clear glasses. Showing kind of 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. In freedom from fear, we have a mother and father tucking in the two children. The newspaper has bombings, horror, and references. Probably the bombings of london, the london blitz of world war ii. If you look around the edges of this kind of scene of serenity and peace, you look around the edges and you see the doll. A reference 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. So, it is one of the more subtle images that shows the images of horror overseas that references them and shows the threat to the future generations. As i said before, the paintings of rockwell were not the images that americans saw. If you follow me, i can show you that americans would have come to learn about rockwells four through images from the saturday evening post. From february through april, every other week, 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 might 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 just read a couple of passages man differs from the animal in 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 a hidden presence and power, and finds in his faith, a beacon of heartrendering hope, a pillar of strength for his fragile decency. It is wonderful here 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. It will be an achievement the size of which all the triumphs of alexander, caesar, and napoleon will be a little thing. To that purpose, they are offering their youth and their blood. To that purpose and to whom we others, regretting that we cannot stand beside them, dedicate the remainder of our lives. So americans saw these, read about them, and in the following month, april of 1943, there was a war bond drive. So these images, having been rejected initially as sketches by the office of war information, became embraced by the federal war bond drive and the images were adopted as the symbols for the second bond drive. 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. But the concept was the idea was that they needed the nation to all come together quickly to raise the funds for munitions and to equip the nations soldiers appropriately. [video newsreel] hollywoods most famous movie stars leave the film capital to help the government sell war bonds. Irene dunn, ronald coleman, hedy lamar, greer carlson, all part of a contingent of some 50 screen celebrities giving their time and talents to aid the national war effort. John in 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. You bought the bonds, you received images of the four freedoms to put 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 Students League in new york, 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 in paintings, as accurately and realistically as a camera might. Although rockwell said in his autobiography that he sometimes looked at the world is a little too messy and not quite as ideal as he would like it to be, and therefore he made it more ideal , in his paintings. He became extraordinarily well art first his working for the boy scouts and then working for magazines the great one being the saturday evening post. So, as an artist who appeared on the 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 for a museum, say. He was a very popular artist and chronicled American Life from really that teens through the teens, the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1940s, up until the early 1970s. So, where this exhibition begins is kind of in the early 1930s. There is an image here from the saturday evening post cover of returning home from vacation. This is a year after the stock market crash of 1929. Well times were bad, there was a market downturn, it wasnt 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 has returned home exhausted. A little frog coming out of the childs box, the hastily packed suitcase, the camera, shoes untied, wornout, with signs about a wonderful vacation. It is something Many Americans could relate to, could see a little bit of their own lives on 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 could 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. Now, six years into the depression, a salesperson with no customers, board, unsuccessful. This was the ravages of the vacations of the depression. Unemployment was spreading throughout the nation. A vacation meant something different. Remember that 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 bytening to the radio, himself in his home, trying to hear the news. It is a much more personal image than the gentleman at the lunch counter. Ill show you why. First, look at his hand, trying tryin dial in and you can imagie the static on the radio. Trying to get the sound clear so he can hear the messages that are coming through the radio. On his lap you can see the father with maps of france, england, a map of europe with the channel with the direction that he understands the army the military forces to be taking. Up above him, eisenhower and macarthur, three stars and three photographs from the navy, the army, and the air force, three sons of the man. So, as you see the clues around, maps and the like, you realize he is trying to track the progress that his sons would be picking on the war front. Each deployed in different areas and you can see the map behind, american flags have been pinned onto the map. You can only presume these 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. What rockwell did is he repainted the newspaper on the eagle as the berkshire 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 magazineform. The actual painting residing with the artist, rockwell himself, given away to a friend. Just at the end, as world war ii ended in thanksgiving, 1945, rockwell made this image of the returning soldier with his mother for the thanksgiving issue of the magazine. Sitting on the chair that is a little bit too small for him, probably his boyhood chair, wearing civilian shoes, but his military uniform, peeling potatoes, as people remember kp 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 for which 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 reader. He could work on images he wanted to do and eventually wound up with look magazine, the rival to the life magazine, that was showing america as it were, primarily with photographs. 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 allwhite school as new orleans was segregated. The occasion of this painting was the 10th anniversary of brown versus board of education, the Supreme Court case that mandated integration in the schools and declared that separate, but equal, was not sufficient in the United States. However, it was understood that in many communities, the foot dragging, the delays, the 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 he you would have seen in the photograph. The photograph showed the marshals who had to escort ruby bridges from her home into the school, ringing her to this allwhite 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 were clean. By the way, notice that she holds stars on the book, a reference 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. Kkk and it is a horrid image, a horrid scene at the time, when protesters and basically angry mobs were at the side of the roads, screaming at the girl, 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 could not be in the middle because it was a twopage magazine spread. So the crease of the magazine was in the middle. 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 came 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. But to be Standing Shoulder to shoulder with history, and viewing history, must be once in a lifetime. 1965, rockwell wanted to reproduce for the magazine a gruesome killing of three students who went to mississippi to enroll voters. They were killed by klansmen. But in his drawing for the image, rockwell focused on the gore and the assailants. In his final image he instead chose to make them in shadows, see you could not see the perpetrators of the crime, the klansmen who killed the students. But you saw them as shadows, as ghouls, much as the ghouls of goya, or some of the great artists have shown evil. Made it people in a ubiquitous manner. Evil in a ubiquitous manner. Something that cannot be attributed to one or two people, this is humanitys evil, trying to wipe out good. Rockwell was very conflicted about the vietnam war. He was troubled by the news he heard in the 1965, 1966, 1967. At one point he was commissioned to do some paintings on the marines, and decided not to follow through and the on the commission because of his conflict with the war. In working through his thoughts, he came up with this image from 1968, called the right to know. Recognizing the people have the obligation and to the right to understand the purposes for which the nation goes to war. You see the empty chair here, the chair of authority. The people have come, people of diverse walks of American Life, young and old, in suits, and Norman Rockwell himself has come to ask. I think by making it plain and not locating it in something as specific with congress with a microphone or with a person there, he has made this a more symbolic, more ubiquitous a right, rather than an incident. The right to know what have probably been something rockwell would have thought about in the way he would have freedom. As people think of rockwell as the typical American Family and the like, as he grew more mature and thoughtful, rockwell created a series of paintings and images bringing together diverse people. In this case, a study for the united nations. Russia, the united kingdom, and the United States as political figures but surrounded by people from the world, an image kind of like a gandhi figure there. People from all nations brought together in thought, contemplation, expectation, hope, desire. That the diverse peoples of the world could come together. We see this theme throughout rockwells late career, the last years of his life, as he does such works as the golden rule that reflect upon diversities of religion. All agreeing of a common theme, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rockwell thought about in an american white middleclass world, later in life celebrated the diversity of people. And the diversities of cultures. And was someone more a Global Citizen that we remember him as. His paintings and his images and his drawings, certainly reflects that. In this exhibition we have carried that theme forward beyond rockwells lifetime. The Rockwell Museum, in organizing the show, put out a call for artists who wish to reflect upon the theme of freedom in America Today. Over 1000 entries were received. And a jury from around the country of art and other experts around the country, selected works by some 40 artists to reflect upon rockwells freedoms and freedom in America Today. 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, shouting, accusing, pointing. Information. Fake, fake, fake. Fake news gathering the news as they wish from sources they wish. We see in the images that have been submitted by the artists much greater diversity of subject. People black, white, from diverse cultures. All creeds. Freedom of speech and liberty. All national values. With religious figures from around the world all coming together. Human rights and eleanor roosevelt. This is a part of the exhibition that has been extremely popular guests, and particularly younger people, who sometimes see the freedom of expression as expressed in the 1940s as sometimes limiting, sometimes monolithic, and now understanding that freedom in America Today is something that is vitally important. From what perspective someone comes from, to what extent they have received such freedoms and bestowed that respect onto others. You can go through this part of the exhibition and see various themes of different peoples, and certain inhibitors of liberty, such as the intrusiveness of electronics and surveillance that enters peoples homes. Religious figures, the dalai lama, gandhi, and others, all part of the same family. Rockwellian in ideal, like the golden rule. And yet more diverse, more inclusive perhaps, from the perspective of todays artists and todays viewers. Certainly some images of resistance. And the reminder that sometimes the nation has fallen short of its ideals. A powerful image in an era of sometimes religious and cultural intolerance, literally wrapped in the flag. For the student body, when the galleries are most full they tend to be here on the top floor , looking at what contemporary artists are reflecting upon. Perhaps seeing some of their own themselves in these images and identifying themselves amongst the various competing positions of these vital issues today. So i found that this has been an exhibition that has brought great diversity to the museum. And peoples from all walks of life throughout the washington, d. C. Community, tourists and certainly our Academic Community of professors, of alumni, and most of all students and graduate students here at the George Washington university. Im a trained art historian from a background in renaissance baroque art, monuments of the 18th and 19th and some 20th century. I had written a book on the iwo jima monument and knew a lot about the war bond drive. I knew rockwells art, i knew i did not know i knew how skillful he was as an artist. I knew his ability to recreate the visual was extraordinary, as good as any, most artists alive or who have ever left, perhaps. But his imagery was always thought to be a little light, a little fluffy, a little to a little too americana. Some people would have called it kitsch. But when you see him wrestling with the serious issues of freedom when he had to get away from the softer side of American Life, as seen in a family magazine, the saturday evening post, but instead look at the struggles 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 had originally thought in my own mind with the biases i brought to the show. In the late rockwell. Rockwell from 1960, 1961 on was a person i think of profound thought who looked at the nations execution or living up to its values, and found that sometimes the nation fell short. And he had the courage to look at segregation in the schools. Segregation in housing. Racial bias. But also with hope that united nations, a 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 mayor mirror reflects the society around it. Rockwell was, for better or for worse, a mirror on the american psyche. Enduring ideals rockwell, roosevelt and the four freedoms is a traveling exhibit, with stops in france houston, denver. , and in september, 2028, to january, 2021, at the Rockwell Museum in stockbridge, massachusetts, where it was organized. You can watch this and all other American History tv programs online at cspan. Org history. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. Today on oral histories, interview with civil rights activist courtland cox, who is active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinate Committee in 1963 march on washington. Here is a preview. Have an idea what i was going to do. I did have a sense of right and wrong. Was impacted by what was going on, beginning to go on in the south. Particularly with, tell emmitt till. I was aware of what was going on with emmett till in montgomery. I did not have i was just aware of it. I had a sense of it but not any great depth. In terms of understanding. There was,to howard, you know, places all over the place. Washington was a very segregated city at the time. Whether you are talking about housing, youre talking about blackandwhite ads in the washington post, whether you were talking about the police department, whether you are talking about the various Department Stores. All those things existed. Way ifaced with it in a was not faced with it in new york. Also at that point with the sit ins, there were small groups of people who decided to do stuff for glenn echo in washington. We formed the nonviolent action group. Some of the people who later went on to really be prominent parts of that. E did two things. D sympathetic actions for things going on in the south. We went out to the Eastern Shore of maryland and demonstrated their. There. Stokely carmichael, who was in school with me, was famous for helping organize these demonstrations because he would promise, ok, we will go demonstrate but we have a great party after the demonstration. Young people want to do that. Some of the other things we did while i was at howard, rfk stadium when the redskins were first there, we picketed because there were no African American football players. Route 40. We were involved in those demonstrations. We worked with julius hobson, a senior. We were his shock troops. Julius was older than we were. When he wanted a demonstration he would call on us to be, you know, the shock troops. Watch the full program today at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 a. M. Pacific on American History tv. Next on the presidency, an encore presentation from cspan series first ladies influence and image. We look back at the life and times of Grace Coolidge who served alongside Calvin Coolidge from 19231929
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