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The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie to feature Norman Rockwell work

A whimsical piece of advertising art painted by well known 20th century American painter Norman Rockwell will be an important part of The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie's permanent exhibit. The 30,000-square-foot art and history museum, currently under construction, is expected to open in the summer of 2007.

Rockwell was commissioned in the 1930s to create several advertising pieces for the Beech-Nut Corporation, which was formed in Canajoharie by Bartlett Arkell in 1902. "The Policeman and the Gum Girl" features a smiling police officer stopping traffic to enjoy a piece of gum offered by a young woman in a majorette costume. As part of a larger advertising campaign, Beech-Nut majorettes handed out free samples to crowds that gathered to see "The Smallest Show on Earth," a retrofitted bus that traveled the country featuring a mechanized miniature circus.

Although most well known as a magazine cover illustrator, Norman Rockwell transposed his trademark artistic style and ability to capture amusing and heartwarming situations into selling products that ranged from pork and beans to cars to toothpaste. During Rockwell's lucrative advertising art career, which spanned more than 60 years, the artist worked with hundreds of companies and produced nearly 1,000 advertisements, illustrations, logos and more.

The painting, "The Policeman and the Gum Girl," from the collection of the Arkell Hall Foundation of Canajoharie, has not been displayed to the public in more than 40 years. In anticipation of its reintroduction to public display, the work has recently undergone restoration at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts. The Arkell Hall Foundation decided to restore the work for display as part of its ongoing effort to boost interest in the museum, as well as the Canajoharie community.

"The conservation of this painting is just one example of The Arkell's commitment to great American art and to the heritage of its surrounding community," noted Joseph Santangelo, Arkell Hall Foundation's President and CEO. "The Arkell family recognized long ago the important responsibility that business has in supporting the arts and culture, and this Rockwell painting is the natural bridge connecting the family's artistic legacy with their numerous business pursuits in the community."

The foundation has teamed with the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery to develop The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, which will also feature more than 350 classic paintings by many of America's most influential and recognizable masters, including Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Georgia O'Keefe and many others.

The Arkell family, who lived in Canajoharie from the early 1800s to the middle 1900s, accumulated this impressive collection of American art. Bartlett Arkell collected the majority of the works and created a small museum in the village for their display, which is now a part of the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery. The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, which was financed and planned by the Arkell Hall Foundation, is a major expansion of that original facility.

Canajoharie is a classic post-industrial American small town that is beginning a major renaissance period. In addition to the foundation's 10 million investment in the downtown museum, the village has secured grants to renovate its picturesque storefronts, and its downtown streets and sidewalks are slated for major reconstruction by the New York State Department of Transportation.

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