Norman Rockwell's White House Paintings Go on View After Remarkable Journey

Norman Rockwell's four-painting series "So You Want to See the President!" (1943) is now on public display for the first time at the White House Historical Association headquarters in Washington, D.C., from June 25, 2026 to June 2027. The works were commissioned by FDR press secretary Stephen Early to humanize the president. They were published in The Saturday Evening Post in November 1943, then given to Early, later lent to the White House from 1978 to 2022. The White House Historical Association acquired them at auction last year for $7.25 million, a record for the nonprofit. The paintings depict various Americans waiting to meet FDR, with the president only glimpsed through a door. The reappearance follows a family feud over ownership, resolved in 2023 by a federal court ruling that Early had gifted the paintings to his grandson William Elam.