This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Shelburne News on June 25, 2026.

“In New York, the models I’ve had to depend on are all washed-out and unhealthy. Up here, I not only encounter practically every type of American I’ll ever have to use, but they look healthy!”

The quote by iconic illustrator Norman Rockwell helps to understand the new Shelburne Museum exhibit “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont.”

The exhibit examines how the beloved American illustrator shaped an enduring vision of Vermont — one with real people — during his years living and working in Arlington from 1939 to 1953. But Arlington wasn’t just a place for him to find refuge from city life in New Rochelle, New York. He was truly woven into the community. He attended the local swing dances and the PTA meetings, judged many art fairs and even crowned a carnival queen, according to Carolyn Bauer, curator at Shelburne Museum.

He knew the local firemen, the doctor and the young children down the street. And he used them to inform his work of painting a picture of true, American life — one that represented not only the values Vermonters hold dear, but also what the country was yearning for at that time.

“Take a step back and think about what is happening in America during those 14 years too,” Bauer said. “We’re coming out of the Great Depression, World War II and the postwar era. How is the country changing its identity? And vis-a-vis, how is Vermont becoming part of the collective national imagination?”

Rockwell was not the only artist of that time finding relief from city life in the quaint town of Arlington in the Green Mountain State. The way Bauer puts it, Rockwell was not creating in a vacuum. The town’s strong artist circle had already taken root with the likes of Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham — who would all play a key role in Rockwell’s creations throughout that time.

While in Vermont, Rockwell created 175 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, Bauer said, and at the time, there were more Saturday Evening Post illustrators per capita in Arlington than anywhere else in the nation.

“They were also really looking to distill into their imagery and inspiration these values that were found in Vermont that couldn’t be found elsewhere at that moment,” Baur said, noting virtues like self-reliance, neighborliness, civic duty — things the country was looking for especially during periods of crisis.

Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, whose legacy has since been tarnished by her alleged ties to the eugenics movement, captured the idea particularly well in 1942, portraying Vermont as a stronghold of democratic spirit and cultural integrity.

“Much of what we call ‘Vermontism,’” she wrote, “is nothing but good ‘old-Americanism’ surviving in an out-of-the-main-current community, which has not been so beaten upon as communities elsewhere by the storms of modern life.”

While the exhibit is separate from the museum’s “America 250” exhibition, it is, at its core, a celebration of Americana.

It’s nearly impossible to talk about Rockwell without talking about patriotism, Bauer said. She pointed to his well-known works in the “Four Freedoms” series — “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Worship,” “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom from Fear” — painted during World War II, with inspiration taken from American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The first, “Freedom of Speech,” depicts a man standing up at what appears to be a traditional Vermont town meeting, a copy of the town’s annual report in hand.

“Not everyone understands that level of civic duty that is instilled to us here in Vermont,” Bauer said.

The exhibit features 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell created for The Saturday Evening Post in addition to large-scale original favorites like “The Tattoo Artist” and “The Young Lady with the Shiner.”

The exhibit, roughly a year in the making — which is record time for a museum — was largely inspired by the museum’s recent acquisition of three Rockwell paintings that, at one point, were commissioned by Rock of Ages in Barre for the company’s national advertising campaign in 1955.

The museum last year was given “Kneeling Girl” and “The Craftsman” — both the final product and also a sketch. Both of them, Bauer said, are important hallmarks of Vermont industry and craftsmanship.

Bauer hopes that those who visit the exhibition — which is on view through Oct. 25 — walk away with not only an understanding of the broader context of the work, but a knowledge of how deeply personal these works were to the artists on display.

“We know Rockwell as this individual genius, but again, he wasn’t working alone, he was working in collaboration with these other Arlington artists, but also the community, the models, the people down the street,” she said. “He knew these people intimately, this town, the American people at large. He was an incredibly empathetic person, and you could read that in each of his works.”