Verizon donates Rockwell work

“The Lineman,” one of Norman Rockwell’s iconic slice-of-life paintings, will permanently join many of his other works in the museum that bears his name.

Verizon Communications Inc. is donating the $2-million painting to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where it has been displayed on loan for two years. Rockwell painted it for a 1948 American Telephone & Telegraph ad campaign. He was inspired by a telephone lineman he spotted working in Cheshire, Mass.

A museum official says “The Lineman” joins about 700 other Rockwell paintings, drawings and studies there.