STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.- This summer, the Norman Rockwell Museum presents the first exhibition to pair Rockwell (1894–1978) and Andy Warhol (1928–1987), examining their artistic and cultural influence during their lifetimes and their ongoing legacies. With 100 works of art, a selection of archival materials, and objects relating to their work and lives, Inventing America: Rockwell and Warhol shows how both of these internationally celebrated image-makers—among America’s most important visual communicators—created enduring icons, and opened new ways of seeing.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, the exhibition is on view from June 10 through October 29, 2017. It is curated by the Museum’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Stephanie Plunkett, and its Curator of Exhibitions, Jesse Kowalski, formerly of The Andy Warhol Museum.

"Creative forces in American visual culture, Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol looked at the world from different vantage points to embrace innovation while satisfying, in unique and personal ways, the aspirations of a broad popular audience," notes Plunkett.

"Technically brilliant and highly skilled visual communicators, Rockwell and Warhol both launched successful careers as illustrators at a young age," adds Kowalski. "The artists both went on to present a hopeful and renewed vision of what it meant to be an American."

Through close consideration of the trajectories of their lives and comparative pairings of their work, Inventing America traces each artist’s journey: from Rockwell’s urban childhood to his eventual prominence as the people’s artist, and from Warhol’s birth into poverty, to his emergence as a commercial illustrator and his ascent to celebrity.

The exhibition examines the output of both artists through the various phases of their careers. Representing their work in the field of commercial advertising, for example, Rockwell’s portraits of children happily eating Kellogg’s cereal are paired with Warhol’s stark, colorless Kellogg’s Corn Flakes silkscreen print. In the political realm, Rockwell’s 1967 smiling portrait of Richard Nixon, created for Look magazine, contrasts with Warhol’s stark pastel-colored Vote McGovern print of Nixon, created on behalf of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. One of Rockwell’s most popular works, Freedom from Want, aligns comfortably with Warhol’s signature Campbell’s Soup Cans.

Other illuminating pairings include portraits of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and notable celebrities from the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition illuminates such themes as high/low and the elevation of the ordinary; mass media and the power of visual communications; the culture of celebrity; and the notion of public vs. private persona, among other topics.

As innovators, Rockwell and Warhol each created and adapted techniques to advance their art to new ends. Inventing America includes various objects they utilized in their artistic and technical processes, such as their projection devices and other personal effects that reflect their unique sensibilities, while archival materials and photographs will illuminate key aspects of their lives and careers.

The artworks included in Inventing America have been drawn from the collections of the Norman Rockwell Museum, The Andy Warhol Museum, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum, Williams College Museum of Art, and private collectors,