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A few years ago, Norman Rockwell had a resurgence in the art world, and various persons said, "You know, we were jerks not to take this guy more seriously."

To which I say ixnay. I still have little love. What's there to love again? But I thought you should know that a big show of Rockwell's paintings—and including a room containing every single one of his Saturday Evening Post covers—is up at Tacoma Art Museum this spring.

There's one object that particularly caught my eye in the show. It's a framed typed letter by Rockwell to his editor at Look magazine, written in April 1965, explaining his struggle to make a good picture in the aftermath of the murder of three young Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. "I tried...to make an angry picture," he writes. Rockwell's painting is a stilted glorification that turns a fresh moment (that would be repeated over and over in the days to come) into an instant history painting, frozen and distant. Shahn made simple, humble drawings of the dead men's faces.