BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – After shattering attendance records with its debut in England, “Norman Rockwell’s America,” a comprehensive exhibition of the legendary illustrator’s 60-year career, opens at the Birmingham Museum of Art on Sept. 16.The exhibition will run through Jan. 6, 2013.

Featuring more than 52 original paintings and all 323 vintage Saturday Evening Post covers, the exhibition visually chronicles the evolving landscape of American culture and society from 1916-1969 and is one of the largest Rockwell exhibitions to ever travel. Rockwell’s six-decade career depicts one of the most eventful periods in American history, spanning four wars, the Great Depression, the space race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Organized by the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, R.I., the exhibition premiered to critical and popular acclaim at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery in December 2010.

Norman Rockwell’s career as an illustrator began in 1912, at the age of 18, when he published his first works. That same year, he was hired as a staff artist for Boys’ Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America. He soon became the magazine’s art editor, a position he held for three years. While Rockwell’s relationship with the Boy Scouts continued long after his departure, it was his work with the Saturday Evening Post that made him a household name. With his first Post cover published in 1916, Rockwell often used his friends, family members and even himself as models for his work. He usually worked from reference photographs staged in his studio, and created scenes depicting everyday American life based on his own experience.

“As Norman Rockwell sought to “tell a whole story with a single image,” this immense collection of deeply sentimental images — from cheerful families around the dinner table to weary soldiers returning from war—tells a heartfelt narrative of American optimism, trust, and enshrined values,” says Birmingham Museum of Art R. Hugh Daniel Director Gail Andrews. “We are proudly presenting this exhibition during a most poignant time, not only over the holiday season but amidst a presidential election. We hope this exhibition will inspire feelings of unity and pride, reminding us all what is truly enviable about being American.”

Although often remembered for his nostalgic approach to American daily life, Rockwell also seriously addressed major social issues of the time in some of his later work. A study of “The Problem We All Live With,” showcases the courage of a young black girl led by US marshals on her walk to school on the first day of desegregation. The original painting recently hung in the West Wing of the White House at the personal request of President Obama. Rockwell’s exploration of such controversial topics was a radical departure from the generally positive and frequently humorous scenes he was known for in his Saturday Evening Post days.

As a painter, Rockwell mastered a wide variety of techniques, and showed strong interest in art history, sometimes emulating the work of the Old Masters, and even showing an interest in Modern artists such as Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock.

“People are accustomed to hearing Rockwell described as an “illustrator,” because he created works of art for magazines, books and advertisements. Indeed, he was perhaps the greatest illustrator in history, but he wasn’t any less an artist. Behind each of his illustrations is a beautifully rendered oil painting. Rockwell was a highly skilled and extremely versatile painter,” says Graham C. Boettcher, the William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art. “Visitors to the exhibition may well come away with the sense that he was among the most talented American painters of the 20th century.”

To complement the show, the Birmingham Museum of Art has organized a supplemental exhibition, which focuses on Norman Rockwell’s work for The Coca-Cola Company, as well as an exhibition of illustrations from the BMA’s permanent collection, including works by Frederic Remington, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish.

Admission to the exhibition is free for museum members, $15 for adults, and $8 for students and children over six.

The Birmingham Museum of Art has created a full slate of programs and events throughout the run of the exhibition. Visit www.artsbma.org for a complete schedule.

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WARNER ROBINS, Ga. (AP) – The Museum of Aviation already has displays of model airplanes ranging from the earliest days of flight to modern aircraft currently used by the Armed Services.

But there’s something special about the new, permanent display of 29 completed (and one half-finished) airplanes on the second floor of the museum. These planes, all of the World War II era, weren’t assembled from a prefabricated kit.

Rather, each plane was personally handcrafted by the late Holice McAvoy, a Washington, Ga., native who died in 1997.

Blake Nobles, 9, of Hawkinsville, was at the museum Sunday with his family. Though they didn’t know about the exhibit coming in, they came away impressed with what they saw.

“They’re cool!” Nobles said. “I like World War II planes the best.”

Added his father, Tim Nobles: “We just got through looking at them. They’re neat.”

According to a 1995 news story from The Atlanta Constitution that’s also part of the display, McAvoy was 10 when his father got a job as a laborer to help build the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in 1940. When the war started, the officers at the base gave the children there, including McAvoy, small pieces of wood and tools and asked the kids to carve models of Japanese aircraft, to help pilot trainees identify them.

The story said McAvoy had a lifelong passion for planes. He briefly enlisted in the Air Force at 17 but didn’t qualify for flight school because he was too young and didn’t have two years of college. Instead, he graduated to the Atlanta Art Institute.

McAvoy eventually moved back to Washington and set up a woodworking business, according to the story.

McAvoy began building model planes that he carved for himself out of blocks of pine for the wings and fuselage. He used pieces of plastic to create cockpit windshields, pilots and gun turrets.

In addition, he painted each aircraft himself, including details such as the pin-up girls who often adorned American bombers during the war.

In addition to American planes, there are also British, German and Japanese planes on display, all at 1/30 scale.

Many of the bases upon which the planes are displayed also are crafted. For example, a Lockheed FV-1 naval bomber is displayed upon an anchor, and a Martin B-26 bomber is mounted upon “9th AF” for the 9th Air Force in which many B-26 bombers served.

Each of the planes are re-creations of planes that were used during the war by specific individuals or in specific battles. McAvoy built a Grumman F4F-3 “Wildcat” used by Lt. Butch O’Hare, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for shooting down five enemy aircraft in five minutes Feb. 20, 1942.

McAvoy didn’t just excel in woodwork. The display also contains a painting of a P-51 Mustang in a dogfight, flown by fellow Washington native Wallace Hopkins.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of the display is the half-finished C-46 “Commando” that McAvoy was building when he died. The display has the carved body of the plane without paint or details, such as propellers or guns. As part of that display, there are McAvoy’s tools, paints and eyeglasses.

Five-year-old Lainey Wilkerson was at the museum Sunday with her parents and grandmother. She pointed to the model of the B-24 “Liberator,” part of the 706th Bomber Squadron, as her favorite.

“It’s big, and it bombs up stuff!” she said.

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Information from: The Macon Telegraph, http://www.macontelegraph.com

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Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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TRENTON, N.J. – From Sept. 14, 2012 through Jan. 13, 2013, the Trenton Museum Society will present an exhibit at Ellarslie, the Trenton City Museum, highlighting the stoneware pottery of James Rhodes, one of the few known American stoneware potters of the colonial period.

The existence of James Rhodes and his distinctive wares has come to light over the past decade following the archaeological discovery of two kiln sites within the City of Trenton and some painstaking historical research into colonial documents. First, in the spring of 2000, a pottery kiln was discovered on the Lamberton waterfront during the construction of the Route 29 tunnel. Some 13,000 shards and pieces of kiln furniture (items used to help in stacking pots in the kiln during firing) were retrieved from this site. The kiln is still intact, buried beneath the tunnel roadway.

In 2005, a second kiln was found a mile from the first in the backyard of the Eagle Tavern property on South Broad Street during the city’s restoration of this local landmark. Hundreds more shards were recovered. Research into documents and analysis of the artifacts established a link between the two sites.

It is now believed that James Rhodes operated the waterfront kiln from 1774 until 1777, working for the prominent Philadelphia merchant, William Richards. Then, from 1778 until his death in 1784, Rhodes ran his own pottery-making business on a property adjoining the Eagle Tavern site (which later became part of the tavern property). Despite our knowledge of James Rhodes’ activities over the 10-year period he was in Trenton, virtually nothing is known of his earlier life.

The exhibit will explain the discovery of the kilns and the archival research, but will focus mostly on displaying the extraordinary variety of grey salt-glazed stoneware products made by James Rhodes. Many of the items on display are fragmentary, a result of their archaeological provenance. However, among the reassembled vessels, visitors can view plates, dishes, bowls, cups and saucers, tankards, jugs and pitchers, coffee pots, tea pots and ointment pots, along with numerous pieces of kiln furniture. Rhodes employed some signature decorative motifs that distinguish his products from those of other potters – floral designs and rough geometric patterns, executed in naturalistic style in painted cobalt blue — but perhaps his most engaging trait was the quirky application of molded faces onto the shoulders of some of his jugs and pitchers.

This exhibit is being curated by Richard Hunter, President of Hunter Research, Inc., a Trenton-based historical and archaeological consulting firm, and Museum Society board member Rebecca White, Archaeological Laboratory Director, URS Corporation; and Nancy Hunter, formerly manager of Gallery 125 in downtown Trenton.

Lecture:

On Sept. 30 at 2 p.m., Richard Hunter will present a brief lecture to coincide with the exhibit on James Rhodes, a stoneware potter who was active in Trenton for 10 years at the time of the American Revolution. Rhodes, whose output is known from the recovery of pottery assemblages from two recently excavated kiln sites in Trenton, is a mysterious figure. How he arrived in Trenton, where or when he was born, or where he learned his trade are not known. The lecture will provide an introduction to the exhibit, explain the historical and archaeological background to Rhodes’s pottery making activity in Trenton, and set Rhodes within the broader context of colonial American stoneware.

For more information, contact the Trenton Museum Society at 609-989-1191 or e-mail tms@ellarslie.org.

Online: www.ellarslie.org

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