Pitt-Bradford to exhibit Norman Rockwell magazine covers

BRADFORD, PA — Several of Norman Rockwell’s iconic covers from The Saturday Evening Post and Look magazine will be on display beginning Friday, Feb. 7, in the KOA Art Gallery in Blaisdell Hall at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

The exhibition, “Norman Rockwell in the 1960s,” will open at noon Feb. 7 with a reception that will be hosted by Dr. Richard Frederick, professor of history. The exhibition will continue through Friday, March 7. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of Pitt-Bradford’s continuing 50^th anniversary celebration.  

All of the framed magazine covers that will be displayed are from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. Pitt-Bradford alumnus Jack Campbell ’67-’69, who has his own collection of Rockwell art, sits on the museum’s board and helped to coordinate the exhibition.

“With Jack’s support and assistance from the museum, we are able to present this very special exhibit, celebrating the university’s 50^th anniversary in a way that gives us great insight into the events of the 1960s,” said Patty Colosimo, Pitt-Bradford’s coordinator of arts programming.

The framed covers that will be exhibited capture small-town America in the 1960s and highlight important moments in history along with some of the leaders during that time period. Some of the Post covers that will be displayed include portraits of President John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, comedian Jack Benny and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Several iconic covers from Look magazine will also be on display, including “The Problem we all Live With” published in 1964, which features a 6-year-old African-American school girl being escorted by four U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school in New Orleans; and “The Final Impossibility” published in 1969, which illustrates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the moon on July 20 of that year.

Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post in 1916, when he was just 22.  During the next 47 years, Rockwell’s work appeared on 321 Post covers. In 1963, he left The Post and went to work for Look magazine, where he spent 10 years painting pictures that illustrated some of the issues of that time period, including civil rights, America’s war on poverty and space exploration. 

Rockwell’s work will be on display in the KOA Gallery from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays.  

For more information contact Patty Colosimo, coordinator of arts programming at (814)362-5155 or Colosimo@pitt.edu. For disability-related needs, contact the Office of Disability Resources and Services at (814)362-7609 or clh71@pitt.edu.