Norman Rockwell: hometown hero.

• Position: USA Yesterday

The exhibition "Hometown Hero, Citizen of the World: Rockwell in Stockbridge" represents a rich selection of the artist's finest work at the culmination of his career and includes fascinating ephemera from the last 25 years of his life in Massachusetts. It is the final exhibit in a trilogy about Norman Rockwell's life, art, and the communities in which he lived. New Rochelle, N.Y., and Arlington, Vt., comprised the first two installments.

Containing more than 60 original artworks, the exhibition is divided into five parts: "Rockwell and The Post. 1953 to 1963," "Space, Race, and Society," "Our Town," "Beyond the Studio," including travels sketches from trips Rockwell took to india and Russia, and "Anatomy of Murder in Mississippi."

Rockwell was born in 1894 in New York City but spent the first 27 years of his professional life in New Rochelle. In 1939, he moved his family to Arlington, intending to make it his permanent home. In 1953, however, Rockwell and his wife Mary relocated 60 miles south to the town of Stockbridge, in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, where he lived until his death in 1978. In Stockbridge, Rockwell produced 38 Saturday Evening Post covers from 1953 to 1963, then turned his talents toward illustrations that dealt with American social issues and other topics that interested him, such as space travel. During this time, he tackled subject matter that was weighty and controversial, including racial discrimination, poverty, desegregation, and the Vietnam War for such publications as Look magazine. As he grew older, Rockwell's painting became more introspective and self-revealing.

"I grapple with the whole concept of how much choice there was on Rockwell's part in choosing his subject matter during his career," says exhibition curator Linda Szekely Pero. "He was given an entirely new forum at Look that...