Students were not encouraged to ask the more difficult question as to what their grandparents and their community did during the war. Krug was aware that these studies generalized that dark period. Because of the long shadow cast by the 13 years of Nazism, many Germans feel a “collective guilt” as well as “an emotional paralysis,” she said. Students spoke with Holocaust survivors and analyzed Adolf Hitler’s speeches word for word. When Krug was in secondary school, her classes took field trips to concentration camps in Germany, France and Poland. She noted that, when approaching a new project, she feels that she has a “political responsibility” as to what images she chooses when telling a story. “Visual propaganda has been created in many different cultures and has affected many different groups,” she said.

Under the category of “Darktown Comics,” Black people were depicted as naïve and childish. “What we tend to forget,” Krug said, “is that during the same period a series of racially charged images … promoted negative stereotypes of African-Americans.” The images ranged from the romantic to the historical however, a series of images also promoted a racial divide. It’s been noted that at one time, virtually every household in the country had one of these inexpensive illustrations of Americana in their home. Moving centuries ahead, she mentioned the 19th-century print house of Currier & Ives. She referred to these images as early examples of “visual journalism.” These ancient markings often display the heroic glories of the hunt, and other primitive works may depict multiple profiles of the human hand or crude studies of animal life. “Images help us celebrate our cultural achievement and establish and cement our hierarchy and social norms.”ĭuring a slide lecture, a photograph of a 7,000-year-old cave painting from Spain was shown alongside Native American petroglyphs. “To me, a drawing means observing, documenting, commenting and reflecting on the world around us,” Krug said to an opening night audience on March 18. Now, a new exhibit encompassing three galleries at Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum capture her illustrations as well as the paperwork, images and artifacts that brought the book to life. She is perhaps best known for her autobiographical 288-page innovative, scrapbook-style “Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home.” With her drawings juxtaposed with family photographs, as well as documents and wartime snapshots, the book defines Krug’s search to determine the involvement of her forebears during the Nazi regime.

The German expatriate, a professor at New York’s Parsons School of Design, has written and created art for three books and provided drawings for as many more for other writers. Discovering the works of illustrator and author Nora Krug is an enlightening revelation.

Nora krug