He was the people's artist and he has come to the people's museum. It is Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) and his art is the centerpiece of five inaugural exhibitions to celebrate the reopening of the East Building of the North Carolina Museum of Art. (This column will focus exclusively on the Rockwell exhibition.)

Rockwell's "Saturday Evening Post" covers were as much a part of white rural America as the Sears Roebuck Catalogue and church Sunday morning.

This show, however, turns out to be much more than a walk down nostalgia lane through images created by a one-dimensional artist. It begins in 1913 and documents a segment of American life told through an illustrator's eye. In 1963, 47 years later, however, Rockwell left the "Post" for "Look" Magazine" and, with his hands no longer shackled as to what he could paint, began to record reality. Surprise, surprise, the man who seemed to see only white bread America confronted Civil Rights head-on and made such images as "The Problem We All Live With," 1963, the iconic illustration of a 6-year-old African-American schoolgirl being escorted by four U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school, and "Murder in Mississippi," 1965, his version of the murders of three young civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The show is rich in imagery, especially for those born before 1940. There are 40 original paintings and more than 300 "Post" covers; there are also original sketches and newspaper and magazine clippings in his research for the "Murder" painting.

Many images recall vivid memories. There are the boys running away after a swim in a forbidden swimming hole, "The Four Freedoms" which illustrated President Roosevelt's 1943 address to Congress, John F. Kennedy's 1960 portrait and the "Triple Self-portrait," 1959, with the artist, seen from the back, looking at his reflection in the mirror while his painted face appears on the canvas in front of him. John Coffey, the museum's curator of American and modern art, escorted the press through the show and pointed out a number of surprises: one, "Girl at Mirror," 1954, shows a pre-teenage girl, whose doll is crumpled on the floor, looking in the mirror at her image and comparing that to the picture of a movie star in her lap. His sympathetic view of young girls who face growing up has always been there; now, however, it is part of a re-evaluation of his work. Another is "Discovery," the funny, yet sad story, of the little boy who finds a Santa Claus suit in his father's dresser.

While most Americans knew Rockwell's images by heart, the scholarly art community denigrated him as an illustrator, with nothing new to say and art too realistic for a world where cubism and abstraction were the standards of the day. Most contemporary art surveys do not even give Rockwell a footnote.

Around 2000, however, Rockwell's art began to find a place in art museums and, according to Coffey, it happened because a new generation of scholars, cultural historians, have reassessed Rockwell and his place in American art. For them social impact, powerful images and an understanding of art history and how to call it into use make his work important enough to share the same roof with Rembrandt, Manet and Warhol.

Coffey, ever the keen historian with an eye for debate has created an introductory gallery to the exhibition and covered its walls with quotes from many of America's national art critics; it is unique to the North Carolina venue of the show and offers the back story. With sharp cynicism and biting wit, the pundits described Rockwell as "a Dagwood Bumstead of art;" "the Rembrandt of Punkin' Crick;" and a painter of "a mayonnaise world."

Art historians find it hard to excuse Rockwell whose art helped create the perfect America myth where there was no poverty or boys dying in a war or African-Americans fighting for their civil rights. The power of his brush could have made a real difference. It is obvious the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., which organized this exhibit, now intends to push the man beyond the "Post" covers. The catalogue tells us the "Post" restricted the portrayal of blacks to showing them only in service industry jobs and on the wall in one of the galleries is a 1962 Rockwell quote, "I was born a white Protestant with some prejudices that I am continuously trying to eradicate. I am angry at unjust prejudices in other people and myself."

Leading up to "Murder in Mississippi," 1965, the final painting in the show, is a gallery of sketches and newspaper and magazine clippings showing his careful research. The composition, which is worlds away from young boys who have eluded an irate farmer, recalls Goya's "Third of May, 1808," 1814-15, and pictures a white man, cradling a bloody black man in his arms, while their friend lies dead at their feet. The picture is about the Klan murder of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman on June 24, 1964. If any one image will elevate Rockwell into the world of fine art, it is this painting.

Blue Greenberg's column appears each week in Entertainment and More. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.

IF YOU GO

"American Cronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell;" "Fins and Feathers: Original Children's Book Illustrations from The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art;" "Bob Trotman: Inverted Utopias," "Binh Dnh: In the Eclipse of Angkor," "John James Audubon's "Birds of America," North Carolina Museum of Art, through January 30.