Thoughts on Democracy
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University
Sixty contemporary artists and designers offer their interpretations of Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Four Freedoms” posters opening at The Wolfsonian–Florida International University on July 5. “Thoughts on Democracy,” is part of Celebrating America, a series of four exhibitions planned in 2008 and 2009, that examine and celebrate the social, political, and personal American experience from the 1930s to the present. In keeping with its theme, Thoughts on Democracy is free and open to the public in the museum’s lobby through December 7. Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings were first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943, and were later issued by the government as posters for a U.S. war bond drive. The paintings illustrated the ideals expressed in FDR’s impassioned “Four Freedoms” speech to Congress in 1941, in which he envisioned a “world founded upon four essential human freedoms”: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.
Photos courtesy Wolfsonian-FIU
