More on Obama and White House art: In July President Obama met Ruby Bridges, who was immortalized by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting, “The Problem We All Live With.” For some reason the political blogs just popped with this news yesterday — even though the WH Blog posted its video on July 15 and it appears that a still photo of the meeting has been up on the WH Flickr Photostream for weeks.

It seems that Obama has chosen to display Rockwell’s painting on a wall outside the Oval Office for the rest of the summer. (Bridges herself had lobbied for this display.) A screen grab from a White House video chonicling the meeting is above. Absent either President Obama or Bridges, this image offers a striking juxtaposition of the painting with an office environment, albeit the most iconic government office in the world. Commentators have especially emphasized the painting’s clear depiction of the “n-word,” but there’s more, such as the red splat of a tomato thrown at a child, punctuating that evil word and pointing to other potential dangers. The ambivalent protectors surrounding her. And of course the girl herself: small, resolute, not hanging back but striding forward. This painting in that space makes for a compelling and complex display.

It’s not the first time Obama has “brought race” to the Oval Office. In early 2010 he had the original Emancipation Proclamation installed in the Oval Office on the MLK holiday. Laurie Fendrich has a nice piece in today’s Chronicle where she speculates on various media outlets’ responses to the Rockwell painting’s summer home and argues that such representations are precisely the kinds of things that should hang outside the Oval Office.

FYI for rhetoric folks: Victoria Gallagher and Kenneth Zagacki have a nice piece in the May 2005 issue of QJS on Norman Rockwell’s images of civil rights, and in it they offer a fine study of this painting.