All About Maggie Meiners

The artist whose work inspired The Four Freedoms & Beyond Project

“I really hope (the art) fosters dialogue, and opportunities for people to see art as a way to create ideas, discussion and possibly legislation. I think art can be a safe way for people to discuss ideas and values.”

-Artist Maggie Meiners on “Revisiting Rockwell” Exhibit

Meiners with her Perfect Body art installation PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID LESLIE ANTHONY

Video Coverage of “Revisiting Rockwell” exhibit

A behind the scenes look at Meiners creating an image based on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech. Courtesy of Maggie Meiners.

Artist Maggie Meiners and Curator Gail Stavitsky discuss “Fragile Freedoms” at The Montclair Art Museum.

Maggie Meiners “Revisiting Rockwell” Exhibition at Montclair Art Museum.

“Revisiting Rockwell” by Maggie Meiners at McLean County Arts Center.

Children’s art project based on

“Revisiting Rockwell”

Cyber Studio: My Freedoms Zine inspired by Maggie Meiners and Norman Rockwell from the Montclair Art Museum.

  Zoom Video Interviews and virtual tours on “Revisiting Rockwell”

Maggie Meiners Interview on the Lisa D. Show

News Coverage on Maggie Meiners’ Work

Maggie Meiners’ Work in a French textbook

In the lesson, The Portraits of Ladies, a French textbook company compares three pieces of art, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, 1967, to Maggie Meiners’ Triple Self-Portrait to Norman Rockwell’s Girl at a Mirror from 1954, and asks students to do an introspective analysis of each piece of art and the themes present.

In the lesson, Reimagining Art, the same textbook company encourages students to analyze Maggie Meiners Dreamer with Norman Rockwell’s The Problem We All Live With.

 Maggie Meiners and her work with CPS Lives at Walt Disney Magnet Elementary School in Chicago

According to CPS Lives, students at Walt Disney Magnet School in Chicago are “exploring the use of theme and variation in many art forms through the lens of emotion. Through studying color and effect in photography and tempo, pitch, and instrumentation in music, students are learning how various forms of media can be manipulated to evoke specific emotions. The objectives of this unit are focused on students using a main theme and then varying it to the emotions that describe their identity.”

CPS Lives goes on to state, “The students were assigned a specific genre of music that ranged from Hip Hop to Jazz to Salsa and were asked to create a short musical melody using elements from that specific era. Once the music portion was complete Maggie Meiners from CPS LIVES introduced the 8th grade class to several movements in art as they related to the music genres studied and themes and variations. She took portraits of each student and then the students were given the opportunity to digitally manipulate their portraits to best represent the genre of music they were working on. See some of their portraits that Meiners helped create here.

Disney Magnet worked closely with Civic Orchestra Fellows and others to present a concert in collaboration with other schools. The students’ musical work, performance art, and digital portraits were showcased during the event. For coverage on this concert, here’s a clip from ABC News.

Maggie Meiners: “I hear with my eyes”

“I felt isolated as a kid. I’ve always assumed that it was because of the profound hearing loss I developed as a result of continuous ear infections and subsequent surgeries. Not being able to hear made me feel left out—of the conversation, of the gossip, of the joke. To make sense of my silenced world, I tried to find ways to compensate while proving to myself that I belonged.  Visual cues provided that bridge.  Lip reading, body language, gestures, the clothes people wore and the objects with which they surrounded themselves were like pieces of a puzzle. I continue to rely on these cues to help make sense of the world from which I came and of which I am still a part.

While my state-of-the-art hearing aids capture sound, I still rely heavily on the visual world for clarification and direction.  This body of work encompasses the various visual cues that, like totems, certify my sense of belonging.  Whether it is a father and son walking together or people playing cards, I feel connected by these components, using them as signposts to point me in the direction of self in concert with the world in which I find myself.”

Maggie Meiners as quoted in F-Stop Photography Magazine, Issue #60 August -September 2013.

Maggie Meiners Exhibition of Works at

ZIA Gallery in Winnetka

Article on Maggie Meiners works at ZIA Gallery in 2011. Article by Laura M. Browning. Sheridan Road.com. Feb-March 2011 edition.

For more on Maggie Meiners

Twitter maggiemeiners.com Artcloud