High-Profile Collectors Join for Rockwell Show

Dave Itzkoff for the New York Times

Put the filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas together and you are certain to get something that is very costly and deeply nostalgic. Their latest collaboration, however, isn’t a science-fiction adventure or another “Indiana Jones” sequel, or even intended for the big screen: they will pool their private collections of Norman Rockwell artwork for an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, BBC News reported. The exhibition, which will open July 2 and will run through Jan. 2, 2011, will explore the connections between movie-making and Rockwell’s illustrations, and will include video interviews with Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas about their collections. “Both of them say Rockwell was a master of storytelling, and a master of telling the story in one figure, and that is just like one frame for a movie,” said Virginia M. Mecklenburg, a senior curator at the museum, according to the BBC. Between the two directors, Mr. Lucas owns the earlier piece of Rockwell art: a Life magazine cover from 1917.