On a chilly, late afternoon in October, Matthew Warshauer entered the New Britain Museum of American Art casually clad in dark-wash jeans, a light-green long sleeve, and his signature black vest. An adorable little mix of terrier and pitbull named Zuzu ambled along by his feet. Warshauer is a history professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut. While his research as a historian is grounded in 9/11 studies, he stepped out of his specialization to tour the new exhibit, Norman Rockwell: From Camera to Canvas, on view through February 2026.
“The very name Rockwell evokes the quintessential characterization of American life in the mid twentieth century,” said Warshauer. Through his photography and other forms of art, Rockwell attempted to show the “real America.”
During the Second World War, Norman Rockwell was a major part of the war effort. He licensed his oil painting series Four Freedoms to the US Department of the Treasury for war bond advertisements. In 1943, Rockwell created the first two freedom paintings in February and the last two later in March. Freedom of Speech illustrates a man standing boldly, holding the attention of a seated crowd. Freedom of Worship includes people of various backgrounds engaging in their religious practices. Freedom from Want captures a family sitting down to a plentiful Thanksgiving dinner. Freedom from Fear depicts a mother and father tucking their two children in at night. The covers were printed in The Saturday Evening Post over four consecutive weeks. Rockwell’s art inspired patriotism in the American people, encouraging them to support the war effort in the 1940s, and fight for civil rights in the 1960s.
Few sounds floated through the gallery, as bold colors called out as Warshauer wandered by. The layout of the gallery was like walking through a cubist painting full of rectangles of different dimensions. There is a medium-sized area with placards recounting Rockwell’s legacy. A short walkway led Warshauer to another open space with rectangular nooks allowing him/people to get lost in artwork and photography.
Warshauer, with his hands clasped behind his back, drifted deeper into the gallery. The first painting that he noticed was Soda Jerk from 1953. Right away he observed, “Here you have a bunch of young women all looking at this soda shop guy.” He smirked and added, “I think there’s a little flirtation that’s there.” He gazed into the painting adding:
It’s something they understand and can see themselves in. Rockwell democratized art by making it connect with the average person. Any American could see themselves in a soda shop. And if you think about a film that was big in my generation, Back to the Future, some of the big scenes occur in the soda shop.
In 2025, there is a vast number of kindred spirits who love the retro aesthetic, as Gen Z can’t get enough of go-go boots and vintage vinyl.
Middle-aged museum goers glided by with notebooks and pencils. The professor stopped at a piece titled, Norman Rockwell Visits a Family Doctor. He observed, “You can see it’s clearly in his home. There’s a soft glow in the fire going. The dog is in the rocking chair.” Zuzu responded by lifting her nose and giving a soft bark. She stared up at her master hoping he’d break focus. He did not.
He’s got books that are, I would assume, not solely related to medicine. He’s got a picture of probably his wife, from her time in the military, which connects to that other period, from the war years. There’s the mount of the deer above with a gun, the gun above every fireplace. It’s sort of a political symbol now. The NRA and things like that. I think most Americans are going to recognize how different this is from today’s home office.
Rockwell is painting in a “remarkably unique period in American history.” Yet Warshauer questioned if “what he’s doing in the 1940s and early 50s would be possible even ten years later?” The professor answered his own question when he stopped before The Problem We All Live With, completed in 1964.
This is a pretty powerful image. Look at the choices that he made. He’s got four men all wearing U.S. deputy Marshall arm brands. He does not include their faces and then a sort of innocent looking little girl. A black girl. I’d say she’s seven or eight years old. Wearing all white. Which is a statement.” He leaned forward, “There is sort of understated violence in here too. You can see that smashed tomato and it looks fresh, so it may have just happened? Because it’s still dripping down the wall. It may have just happened. And then you see what’s washed out in the background: the N-word. Then you’ve got KKK written in there.
Rockwell’s art didn’t always idealize America, rather he captured its flaws. “The more I think about it, the more I look at that tomato, and see that it was just thrown.” Warshauer stated solemnly, “There’s definitely a lesson that we could learn from a piece like this.” Art translates a message and propels discussion. In terms of Rockwell’s paintings, “they grab the attention of the American people saying, ‘Hey look this is you. Do you have anything to say about that?’”
The walls themselves doubled as art, holding large paintings, boxing in The Problem We All Live With. The occasional nook held the painting itself, perhaps a fraternal twin differing in artistic style, and the photographs that inspired Rockwell. The professor pointed to the wall, “Look at this one. It’s only the tomato. Wow. It’s cool that the museum is able to include the photographs and the watercolors, showing the process.”
Rockwell’s wartime artwork documented the evolution of a nation fighting a heroic war abroad to a domestic battle that pitted Americans against one another. As far as his role in American art history, “Norman Rockwell is like a warm American blanket: all that is good and safe and decent,” Warshauer proposed. While that may pertain to a portion of Rockwell’s artwork, the key to his success is how attuned he was to the needs of the culture. A good painter does not just crouch around the positive or yell on and on about the negative, they project what people want, but more so, what they need to see.
Featured Image: Norman Rockwell, The Problem We All Live With, 1963, Courtesy of Norman Rockwell Museum Collections
After connecting the paintings to your thoughts, I can say that I see the different messages that Dr. Warshauer was portraying through his art. The first picture with the tomato sliding down the wall and the washed out N word connects back to when America was going through segregation. I could be wrong but I believe that picture portrays Ruby Bridges and what it was like during that time for her. I personally love this piece because it holds a lot of power to it. One of the things that stuck out to me the most in this image was all four men escorting the black girl were U.S. marshalls. This shows the severity of the times when it came to segregation, that even a child was not safe in her own right. But, this is America. The symbolism that art holds is very strong, because the idea is to get a point across whether it’s direct or there’s a hidden meaning. Dr. Warshauer did a great job with incorporating both within his art pieces. One of my favorites to look at from this article was the four freedom oil paintings. We all might have different ideas of what freedom is and how it should look, but Dr. Warshauer took four different interpretations of what we deem as “freedom” in America and put his own spin on it. I love how the first two freedom paintings differ strongly from the others. The first two oil paintings grant freedom of something while the last two are freedom from something. This was so powerful to me because it reflects the different times that America had from the 1940s ironically until the present time. Although these pieces of art were created in the 1940s-1960s, its symbolism carries over into what goes on in America today. I also find it ironic how America is the land of the “free” yet in the last two oil paintings they needed to be granted freedom from something instead of expressing it.
Dr. Warshauer was a good person to go through the exhibit with because of his outgoing personality and deep historical training! I think there’s A LOT of flirtation going on in the SODA FOUNTAIN painting–but the boy likes one girl, a different girl likes him and, well, who knows what the girl with her back to us is even thinking!