With health care arguably the top domestic issue today, the subject of health and well being fills the editorial pages of newspapers and magazines. The need to illuminate complex stories about genetics, automated medicine, geriatric care, homeopathic medicine, and more provides ample canvas to illustrators who are called upon to create thought-provoking images.

This Saturday, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, invites the public to an opening reception for Picturing Health: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Illustration. The exhibition features both Norman Rockwell's painterly narratives created for medical advertisements in the last century, and contemporary editorial art by 12 of today's top illustrators. Among them are: Melinda Beck, Cathie Bleck, Guy Billout, Juliette Borda, Cora Lynn Deibler, Teresa Fasolio, Frances Jetter, Gregory Manchess, Peter de Sève, Whitney Sherman, Elwood Smith, and Mark Ulriksen. The contemporary images on view here were first published in Healthy Living, Men's Health, Smart Money, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the New Yorker, among others.

From 1929 to 1961, Norman Rockwell was commissioned to create images for the advertising campaigns of The Upjohn Company, Lambert Pharmacal and American Optical. Similar to his covers for The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell's advertising images inspired people to view themselves and their doctors with optimism. The original oil paintings by Rockwell on view are part of the Pfizer Collection.

Featured speakers at opening reception, Saturday January 27, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, are Barry Winiker, curator of the Corporate Art Collection, Pfizer Inc. and Ronald L. Hoffman, M.D., a pioneer in the field of holistic and alternative medicine. The exhibition continues through May 28, 2007, with many public programs on the subject of health, for both children and adults.

Illustration: Dissing Doctors, for Smart Money, © Mark Ulriksen, courtesy of the artist.