Devoted to Illustration
The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies’ focus is to bring new scholarly attention–and resources–to the art of illustration, a hugely influential aspect of American visual culture that is only now being studied and appreciated. Through creating online research tools and collections access, supporting scholarship, and spurring the collection and preservation of important artworks, RCAVS will establish a context for understanding the role of illustration art in shaping and reflecting American culture.
The Rockwell Center houses four programs:
- Illustration Partnership Network
- Norman Rockwell Archives and ProjectNORMAN
- Illustration Art Collection
- Rockwell Scholars Program
Illustration Partnership Network
The Rockwell Center’s goal is to foster partnership and collaboration with museums, universities, and libraries with significant collections and focus on American illustration arts, forming a national network of institutions dedicated to presentation, preservation and scholarship of visual communication art. This network will give prominence to this art form, invite discourse and provide scholars with access to the nation’s richest holdings of illustration collections and publishing.
The Rockwell Center seeks to be part of a national consortium of museums, the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH), a distinguished association of research institutes at our nation’s most prestigious museums.
Norman Rockwell Archives and ProjectNORMAN
ProjectNORMAN (New Online Rockwell Media Art and Archive Network), a ten-year, comprehensive online publishing project to preserve, catalogue, computerize and digitize its collection of original artworks, and over 150,000 archival objects, making them accessible to researchers, was begun in 2003.
Illustration Art Collection
The Norman Rockwell Museum has begun to expand its collections beyond Norman Rockwell to build a collection of art of other illustrators. Norman Rockwell Museum is one of the nation’s premiere collections for this significant aspect of material culture and visual communication.
Rockwell Scholars’ Program
The Center supports research in the field of American illustration and visual studies. Scholars, graduate students, and museum professionals are invited to apply for Rockwell Scholars’ fellowships. Working with art, library, and studio collections at the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Rockwell Center’s nationwide members’ museums and illustration collections, scholars will study the relationship of illustration art to popular culture, social history, mass media, formal art history and other disciplines.