Ah, well. It's about time the art world came to its senses and began to appreciate the genius and the subtlety of a painter who looked to both Chardin and N.C. Wyeth as masters. Rockwell's great works are here: Rosie the Riveter, The Four Freedoms, After the Prom, Breaking Home Ties, The Gossips, and scores of others that celebrate (and poke the gentlest of fun at) small-town, family life. There were other illustrators of Rockwell's ilk during the '40s and '50s, his most popular decades, but as Steven Heller writes in "Rebelling Against Rockwell," "Rockwell ran one step ahead of cliché, while his acolytes lagged a mile behind." --Peggy Moorman

In "the Great Art Communicator", Thomas Hoving makes a very convincing case for Rockwell as an influential American artist. Rockwell's son Peter's essay entitled "Some Comments from the Boy in the Dining Car" (referring to the painting for which he was used as the model when he was a boy) offers invaluable insights into what the artist himself thought about his work. There is also an essay by Anne Knutson that tells the fascinating story of the Saturday Evening Post, its importance in the definition of "Americanism" and how Rockwell's relationship with the editor influenced his work.

The debate about Norman Rockwell's place in the history of art will undoubtedly continue. But as Laurie Norton Moffatt sums up in her essay "The People's Painter": "The personal transformation and communication that occurs when one looks at a work of art is the artist's defining moment. Rockwell was a master of delivering that moment to his public."