One hundred and thirty original New Yorker covers! I saw the travelling exhibit of cover prints in Seattle, and it's a beaut. I trust the folks at the Norman Rockwell Museum, where the collection of originals is on display till October 31, will know a bit more about the magazine than the gallery owners I spoke to out there, who were very friendly but didn't know many details about individual artists or changes in cover art through the years. Everyone was having a great time talking about their memories of the covers there and others they remembered, though, and it was clearly a successful exhibit. They even gave out some fun promo stuff, left over from the party I just missed by having taken the special "turtle with a concussion" route from LaGuardia to the West Coast. Airdaze notwithstanding, I dug the Lufthansa puzzle.



As for the new show, here's Daniel Oppenheimer in the Mass. Valley Advocate:

Historians, I predict, will look back at the history of America in the 20th century and write that The New Yorker magazine influenced our culture in two significant ways. The first influence was on the creation of attitudes and styles for perhaps the world's first mass upper-middle class.

The other influence—which is really a tributary of the first—was on the popularization of avant-garde art styles. All the many isms of 20th century modern and postmodern art have made their way into The New Yorker maw, where they've been filtered through the magazine's epic bemused-ness and emerged on the other side, on the covers and in the comics. Once there they've eased their way, like a bemused mint julep, into the gullets and aesthetical sensibilities of millions of people who aren't quite ready to be at the crest but enjoy being in the hearty middle of the next new wave in art.

Or not. I could be wrong. Make up your own mind at the Norman Rockwell Museum's new exhibition, The Art of The New Yorker: Eighty Years in the Vanguard (the second half of the title would seem to cut against my claim that the New Yorker was a popularizer). And hash it out in the accompanying series of discussions with New Yorker artists and writers.

Tomorrow Françoise Mouly and Peter De Sève (of iPod Man fame) are speaking at the museum from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at a special media preview luncheon. It's a great museum; if you live in the Berkshires (you lucky retriever) and there are any seats left, go there for me, would you? And Stockbridge is a gorgeous weekend spot. Hike a spell and have lunch at the Red Lion Inn, which I first visited when I was 11. I checked a few summers ago—it's still good.

Categories: NYer, Covers