Stockbridge — The Norman Rockwell Museum’s Jazz Age exhibit showcases a period of expressive and diverse art from the 1920s and 1930s.
The exhibit includes over 120 illustrations from the post-World War I era, spanning from 1919 to 1942. It features magazine covers, posters, drawings, and printed ephemera by artists such as Frank E. Schoonover, Aaron Douglas, John Held Jr., Beatrice Anderson, Loïs Mailou Jones, Russell Patterson, and J.C. Leyendecker.
Many of the pieces on display are on loan from the Delaware Art Museum, as well as from various private collectors and libraries.
“It’s really exciting to see when an art exhibition travels from one museum to another, because it looks so different in another space,” Norman Rockwell Museum Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett said at a press preview event on November 7. “The period after World War I was a flowering of the arts when it came to illustration, music, and dance performance. During this age, there were so many areas that revolutionized what we thought about as all these art forms. Of course, jazz music was at the heart of it all.”
The exhibit is organized into several themes, including “Harlem Renaissance,” “Modern Women,” “Advertising,” and “Art Deco Design.”
“Art relating to the Harlem Renaissance emphasizes the arts of people from the South who moved to the North in order to freely practice their creativity,” explained Plunkett. “Art relating to modern women includes concepts of modern style and romance. The publishing industry during this time was vibrant because illustrations allowed people to visualize the lives that they would like to achieve, whether they could or not.”
“In this exhibition, there is a diversity of styles that are represented,” said exhibit curator and Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum Heather Campbell Coyle. “During this time period, there was a huge blossoming of illustrated art, and there were a lot of different kinds of magazines published for different kinds of audiences. Some artists worked in a very modernist style, others worked in art deco styles, and other artists were working in a very Rockwellian style of realism.”
Coyle explained that the diverse styles of art that came out of the Jazz Age did not clash with each other, but rather coexisted. “During this era, it was all about a coexistence in style,” she said.
The exhibit will be on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum until April 6. For more information, visit the museum’s website.
