50,000 Norman Rockwell Photographs Now Digitized and Available Online — openculture.com

Reference photo for Norman Rockwell’s portrait of Robert F. Kennedy, c. 1968. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. Whatever you think of Norman Rockwell’s paintings and illustrations, you can’t deny them the status of enduring Americana. For my money, Rockwell’s images certainly make for more interesting representations of the culture than those of, say, Thomas Kinkade. But even if you have little interest in the America Rockwell created on paper and canvas, you’ll surely find compelling the America he captured in photographs. We now have unprecedented access to these thanks to a $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that has enabled the Norman Rockwell Museum to digitize what they call the Norman Rockwell Photographic Print Collection: approximately 50,000 images that, according to archivist Venus Van Ness, “provide a unique window into Mr. Rockwell’s working process, his personal life, and the times in which he lived.”

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