President Obama has asked, and gotten permission, to borrow Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With” from the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge for the White House, boston.com reports. A study of the wonderful Rockwell, of Ruby Bridges being escorted to school in New Orleans, was mentioned here last November, in anticipation of an auction at Sotheby’s and a hope that Alice Walton might buy it for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
The study sold for $854,500, triple its auction house estimate. Does that mean Walton got it? I’d like to think so.
The president will exhibit the painting for the 50th anniversary of Bridges integration of William Frantz public school in November 1960. Crystal Bridges opens in November — what an excellent time to show off its acquisition, if indeed it’s there in Bentonville.