Reagan to Assist Rockwell Museum

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — President Reagan has agreed to serve as honorary chairman of a $5-million drive to build a new museum for artist Norman Rockwell’s works, Rep. Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.) said Tuesday.

The museum is to be on a 40-acre estate on the outskirts of Stockbridge, the small Berkshire Hills village where Rockwell lived and worked for 25 years before his death in 1978. It will replace the Old Corner House museum on Main Street, which can display only a fraction of the 400 Rockwell paintings and drawings it owns.

Fred F. Fielding, counsel to the President, said that Reagan “as a matter of routine restricts his acceptance of honorary chairmanships to those organizations with which he has been personally associated, usually before assuming office . . . . In this case, however, the President has decided to make a rare exception.”