Four panels of an interconnected painting by Norman Rockwell have gone on public view for the first time at the headquarters for the White House Historical Association, a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” a short walk from its namesake in Washington, D.C.
The work ran under the headline “So You Want to See the President!” in the Saturday Evening Post after it had been commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s press secretary Stephen Early in 1943.
As reported by Artnet News, “After publication, Rockwell gave the paintings to Early, but following the press officer’s untimely death in 1951, they went to his daughter and were later lent to the White House between 1978 and 2022, becoming an ever presence in the West Wing.”
Last year, three years after the loan had ceased, the painting changed hands by way of Heritage Auctions for $7.25 million in a “sale [that] followed a bitter ownership dispute and cast the painting as an emblem of both American democracy and litigiousness,” as Artnet described it at the time.
In a statement related to the work going on view, Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, called So You Want to See the President! a “portrait of American democracy itself.” He added: “We are honored to share this defining piece of White House history with visitors from across the country and around the world, especially during America’s Semiquincentennial. Its scenes remind us that the White House belongs to the people.”
The WHHA called the Rockwell acquisition the “most significant single-artifact investment” in its history, and noted the work will be on view through June 2027 as part of an immersive exhibition series titled “The People’s House: A White House Experience.”
Norman Rockwell, So You Want to See the President!, 1943.
Photo Bruce M. White/Courtesy White House Historical Association
