The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Audio recording collection

Repository: Norman Rockwell Museum. Archives

Collection Description (CRHP): The Audio Recording Collection consists of eighty-eight recordings, sixty-one of which include interviews with Norman Rockwell, his family, models, studio assistants, and students. Of the seventeen recordings which feature Rockwell himself, several derive from the artist's own audio reels of his television appearances on programs such as The David Frost Show, and The Virginia Graham Show. Others document various speaking engagements, and informal discussions. Of particular note are eight recordings that were transferred from Rockwell's Dictaphone belts, which he used to dictate portions of his autobiography.

Thirty-seven recordings in this collection document interviews and informal meetings with Rockwell's models from New Rochelle, New York; Arlington, Vermont; and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

About one quarter of the Collection includes recordings related to Norman Rockwell Museum institutional memory, and includes lectures, conversations with founders, and copies of radio broadcasts about the Museum.

Scope and Content Note:
Included in this collection is Norman Rockwell Recalls, An Oral Biography with Douglas Cooper, an informal studio interview from 1972. The artist speaks on his pictures related to the Civil Rights Movement, meeting presidents and presidential candidates, and why the subject of his art shifted in the 1960s.

Collection Description (Extant): Oral histories, media broadcasts, and conversations which relate to the life and work of Norman Rockwell, and Norman Rockwell Museum institutional history.

Access Copy Note: Interviews with Rockwell, his family, models, students, and studio assistants are available digitally. Recordings related to Norman Rockwell Museum institutional history are not digitized. Recordings are available in the following formats: compact discs, audio cassettes, reel-to-reel audio tape, and Dictaphone belts.

Date(s): 1949-2002

Digital Status: Partial

Existing IDs: RC.2010.10

Extent: 3 linear ft

Language: English

Interviewees: Douglas Cooper

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Subjects:

Artists
Civil rights movements in art
Civil rights movements--Press coverage
Media
Rockwell, Norman, 1894-1978

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings