National Press Club loans Rockwell painting to Rockwell Museum

The National Press Club's painting “Norman Rockwell Visits a Country Editor” will be on loan to the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, for the next year.

The museum houses the most significant collection of the artist’s work, as well as the Norman Rockwell Archives, a collection of more than 100,000 items, including working photographs, letters, personal calendars, fan mail, and business documents.

The Press Club will be recognized in all promotional and descriptive materials while the painting is in their care.

"Country Editor" appeared in the May 25, 1946, Saturday Evening Post and immortalizes the Monroe County Appeal, a weekly that has been published continuously in Paris, Missouri, since 1867. It was one of scores of semi-photographic Rockwell images the magazine ran on its cover or on inside pages from 1916 to 1963.

Club archive records indicate that the painting was given to the Club at a luncheon for Norman Rockwell on July 25, 1967.

The painting was part of the highly popular exhibit, “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” sponsored by the Rockwell Museum in 2009. The exhibit, which offered new perspectives on Rockwell’s creative process and his intensive use of photography, was greatly enriched by the inclusion of NPC's “Country Editor,” and it was viewed by thousands of people at multiple U.S. venues.

A reproduction of the painting hangs behind the Club’s 13th floor reception desk, and in the president’s office on the 14th floor.