Art Institute of Chicago Acquires First Norman Rockwell Painting, “The Dugout,” and Puts It on View
The Art Institute of Chicago has added its first work by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), bringing one of the most recognizable images of American baseball into a gallery already anchored by some of the museum’s best-known holdings. The painting, “The Dugout” (1948), shows Chicago Cubs players slumped after a double-header loss to the Boston Braves. It is now on view at the museum.
Rockwell’s canvas is the largest and most elaborate oil study he made for one of his Saturday Evening Post covers. Beyond its comic surface, the image helped cement the Cubs’ long-running reputation as the “lovable losers.” By the time the illustration reached newsstands, the team had dropped to last place in the National League, where it would finish the season.
The work was donated by former Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and Diana Rauner. Its placement in the museum’s gallery is especially pointed: “The Dugout” now hangs near Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” (1930), Ivan Albright’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” (1943-44), and José Clemente Orozco’s “Zapata” (1930), among other touchstones of American and Latin American art.
Sarah Kelly Oehler, chair and curator of the arts of the Americas and vice president of curatorial strategy at the museum, said the institution was eager to give visitors a chance to encounter Rockwell as “this quintessential American artist,” one who captured “relatable facets of American society” across politics, social rituals, and, in this case, baseball.
Tom Ricketts, executive chair of the Cubs, called the acquisition fitting as the franchise marks its 150-year anniversary in the National League. For the Art Institute, the addition extends a collection that already frames American identity through painting, illustration, and mythmaking. For visitors, it offers a familiar scene with a sharper edge: not triumph, but the dignity of defeat, rendered with Rockwell’s exacting eye.
