THE ILLUSTRATOR Norman Rockwell’s rehabilitation as a painter can be dated to the fin de siècle retrospective that originated at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in November 1999 and toured the US (Chicago; Washington, DC; San Diego; Phoenix; and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts) for two years before triumphantly occupying the grand ramp of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York only weeks after the trauma of September 11, 2001.

Never had cultural comfort food been more welcome. The market responded accordingly (as did the New York Times, which tied its own coverage of