Stockbridge's Norman Rockwell Museum experienced an unexpected temporary crash of its website last Wednesday, Feb. 3 due to a surge in Internet traffic brought on by a Google tribute to the artist on his 116th birthday. Google, as it has been known to do for special occasions, modified the banner on its primary search engine site at www.google.com that day in imitation of the Rockwell painting "Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)," also sometimes known as "Little Spooners," a tribute which channeled some 1,000 hits per second to the museum's under-muscled URL. The painting was originally featured on the April 24, 1926 cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
Rockwell is perhaps the most recognized American artist of the last century. His work included war posters, book and magazine illustrations for Boys' Life, Look magazine, Popular Science, Literary Digest and 322 covers for the Post, his best-known employer (June 3, 1916 issue pictured). He was commissioned to paint several portraits in his lifetime, including portraits of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, as well as foreign leaders Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru.
His family lived principally in New Rochelle, N.Y. and Stockbridge, Mass., where the Norman Rockwell Museum maintains a 36-acre site overlooking the Housatonic River Valley. The site includes the artist's original studio (transported from its first location on Stockbridge's Main Street) and a museum that preserves his complete archives, as well as hosting several exhibits annually that showcase the work of other American illustrators. The Museum is currently featuring a book and exhibition entitled "Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera," and has been garnering high marks for its traveling show "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell."
