The Delaware Art Museum has opened 'Imprinted: Illustrating Race,' an exhibition co-curated by University of Delaware professor Robyn Phillips-Pendleton that examines how race and identity have been depicted in popular illustration over more than a century. The show, which previously ran at the Norman Rockwell Museum, features works from books, magazines, advertising, trade cards, posters, and even a cookie jar, tracing the evolution of racial representation in American visual culture. It includes a notable shift by Norman Rockwell, who after decades of depicting predominantly white family scenes for the Saturday Evening Post, turned to socially relevant topics like civil rights in the 1950s.
The exhibition matters because it addresses a long-standing gap in how Black Americans and other people of color have been portrayed in mass media, sparked by Phillips-Pendleton's personal experience of rarely seeing images that reflected her identity as a Black woman. By bringing together diverse objects from popular culture, the show makes visible the subtle and overt ways illustration has shaped—and been shaped by—racial attitudes, offering a timely conversation about representation that resonates with current debates over diversity and inclusion in the arts. The exhibition runs through March 1 at the Delaware Art Museum.