Championing Illustration: Laurie Norton Moffatt, Director, Norman Rockwell Museum

The culture vultures of the Berkshires enjoy Berkshire Living's monthly series, "The Rest of the Story," at which the editor of the magazine, Seth Rogovoy interviews a subject of an article. Today Mr. Rogovoy interviewed the director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Laurie Norton Moffatt, joined by Lesley Ann Beck, who wrote about the museum in the June issue.

The article and talk highlighted two initiatives of the museum in Stockbridge designed by Robert A.M. Stern, marking its 40th anniversary this year: ProjectNORMAN, the effort to digitize Rockwell's archives (40,000 items have been digitized; 160,000 items remain); and the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, which will support research fellows doing work on American illustrators.

The center is a fitting next chapter: By exhibiting illustrators other than Rockwell, and by conducting interpretive work studying the cultural value of Rockwell, the Norman Rockwell Museum has led the way to broaden academic approaches to illustration, beyond art history.

Here's what Ms. Norton Moffatt -- who has had the post of director for 23 years, and before that wrote the catalogue raisonné of his work -- said on the subject this morning:

Norman Rockwell was just one of thousands of other illustrators creating amazing work, illustrating the popular culture of the day, from the Civil War on.... What's been recognized recently is the importance of this visual culture: This material is the documentation of what our culture has been about for 150 years. Art history looks at the aesthetic of the work; now there's a whole field of academics that looking at the cultural impact. You can think about the Sistine Chapel, and stained glass windows: these were telling stories to illiterate populations, to people who were very visually literate. Illustration comes out of this long tradition. When Norman Rockwell worked, movements like abstract expressionism were developing, so we are fortunate to have a record of Norman Rockwell from the 20th century, because if we were trying to interpret the physical world from Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso we might have a confusing time as to what the world actually looked like.

And what about the Illustrators of today, who work on computer screens to create elaborate virtual worlds for video games and movies?

These artists won't be remembered by name; they won't have the same public forum that Rockwell had on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. They tend to be more anonymous.

Some things to look forward to: Ms. Norton Moffatt mentioned that an exhibit about Rockwell's influence on film is in the works; that Deborah Solomon (the "Question for" interviewer for The New York Times Magazine) is writing a biography of Norman Rockwell which "promises to have some really interesting perspectives," and that this fall the museum will be exhibiting photographs from the archive, illuminating how Rockwell worked.

The talk took place at the movie house the Triplex in Great Barrington, so we snapped the speaker by the candy stand.