Norman Rockwell people-watched in the West Wing lobby. Now those
sketches are on public display
[June 25, 2026]
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than 40 years, sketches by American
illustrator Norman Rockwell of scenes from the White House visitor’s
lobby graced the walls of the West Wing, where every president from
Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump had seen them.
Now, they're going on public display for the first time after a
nonprofit organization paid a whopping sum of more than $7 million for
the sketches after they ended up on an auction block following a family
dispute over their ownership.
The four 1940s-era sketches titled “So You Want to See the President!”
show people from all walks of life waiting to see President Franklin D.
Roosevelt during World War II. They depict U.S. senators, members of the
military, the press and even a Miss America biding their time in the
West Wing reception area, as they wait to be shown to the Oval Office.
The White House Historical Association spared no expense for the
sketches to prevent them from being “lost forever,” such as to a private
art collection, its president Stuart McLaurin told The Associated Press.
The public will be able to see them through June 2027 at the historical
association’s “The People’s House” education center near the White
House, he said.
“And since they had been seen by the eyes of so many presidents and
first ladies and senior White House staff and important visitors from
around the world, we wanted the American people to see them. So we
acquired them,” McLaurin said.
The sketches had been put up for sale by a grandson of the White House
official who received them as a gift from Rockwell.
Rockwell is famous for his scenes of American life
Rockwell, who became famous for his illustrations of everyday American
life that graced covers of the Saturday Evening Post, spent hours at the
White House people-watching from a chair in the West Wing lobby,
McLaurin said.
But after his sketches were consumed by a fire that destroyed Rockwell's
art studio in Vermont, he went back to the White House to collect more
material.
“So it's really a combination of his memories from that first visit, the
memories of the second visit,” McLaurin said. “And it is an array of
these people representing the military and White House staff and members
of Congress and the press corps and all kinds of people that literally,
to this day, go through that space in the West Wing.”
The first of Rockwell's colorful sketches opens with scenes of the
entrance gate, photographers waiting outside the White House entrance on
West Executive Avenue and Stephen Early, a former AP journalist who
became the third White House press secretary under Roosevelt, in a
huddle with a group of journalists. Seated on red leather chairs and
reading papers are members of the press and Rockwell, with a pipe in his
mouth and legs outstretched.
The next scene shows Miss America — identified as Rosemary LaPlanche,
the 1941 titleholder — in a yellow dress and her sash, sitting on a red
sofa alongside her publicity man. A kilt-wearing Scottish officer also
sits nearby as a Secret Service agent hovers.
U.S. Sens. Tom Connally, D-Texas, and Warren Austin, R-Vt., face each
other in conversation as they sit on a red couch in the third sketch
while a U.S. Navy “WAVES” officer looks on from a nearby chair. Gens.
Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell and Edwin M. “Pa” Watson shake hands
while being photographed, and an aide pushing Roosevelt's lunch cart is
chased by Fala, the president's dog.
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Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical
Association, displays a newly-acquired suite of four interrelated
paintings by Norman Rockwell titled, "So You Want to See the
President!" at the association's offices Wednesday, June 10, 2026,
in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
 The final sketch shows more
uniformed U.S military members huddled in conversation and, finally,
an aide opening the door to the Oval Office, where the president is
glimpsed.
“It's such a little aquarium of these people and we're like a fly on
the wall as to what it was like at that particular period of time,”
McLaurin said of the sketches.
They were a gift for Roosevelt's press secretary
Rockwell made the sketches for Early and gave them to him after they
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1943, during World
War II, McLaurin said.
Early, who died in 1951, had displayed them on the wall in his West
Wing office and then kept them for many years after. In 1978, a
family member turned the sketches over to the White House, where
they were on display throughout the West Wing for more than four
decades, sometimes in a hallway between the press offices that are
mere steps from the Oval Office.
The family’s ownership dispute began in 2017 when Thomas Early, one
of the press secretary’s sons, saw them on a wall in the White House
while watching a television interview with President Donald Trump,
according to court records.
William Elam III, a grandson of Stephen Early, said his mother
received the drawings as a gift from her father, the press
secretary, before he died, and that ownership had later passed to
him.
The illustrations had gone to the White House in 1978 under an
agreement that required they be returned to Elam upon request. The
White House gave back the drawings in 2022.
A federal appeals court settled the dispute in May 2025, upholding a
lower-court ruling in favor of Elam, according to court records.
Elam put them up for sale.
Association says the sketches are ‘priceless’
Historians at the association have researched the people in the
drawings to learn their stories, McLaurin said, and the exhibit will
include a digital component that uses modern technology to bring the
characters in the sketches to life.
The association is still figuring out what happens to the sketches
after the exhibit ends in June 2027. They may be shown in other
venues, and may eventually end up back in the White House, McLaurin
said.
When the association learned the sketches were for sale, “our board
affirmed that this is an acquisition that we should make,” he said.
McLaurin said the privately funded association, which was founded in
1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and receives no taxpayer
dollars, had feared the sketches would sell for even more than the
$7.25 million it paid for them. That is the most the association has
ever paid for a work of art for the vast collection it holds as part
of its mission to help the White House collect and display artifacts
that represent American history and culture.
“In our view, these are priceless works,” McLaurin said.
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