Utah school hoping to hang onto its Rockwell

DRAPER — Draper Elementary students gather for reading time at the feet of Ichabod Crane.

Make that "Ichabod Crane," painted by the famed Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell.

The original artwork hangs, enclosed in glass, at a kindergartner's eye-level in the school's media center.

But will the Rockwell stay when Jordan School District divides along east-west lines in 2009?

The principal believes it will. Draper schoolchildren bought it back in 1951 with $800 and a tug at the artist's heartstrings. Children, in fact, purchased many of the 63 original works that have decked the school's halls and offices since the 1920s.

"Children love this collection, and they know it's theirs," Principal Tamra Baker said. "I think the understanding of the community is the collection belongs to the future of the school and the children of this school."

But technically, the artwork within the Jordan School District is the property of the Jordan Board of Education, the district says. The district is taking an inventory of billions of dollars worth of assets and liabilities, including hundreds of pieces of art in more than 90 buildings. Two transition teams representing Jordan District and the new east-side district, which includes Draper Elementary, will divide them.

Surely, both sides will strive to ensure everyone gets a fair shake. But it's hard to say where everything will shake out.

"Could they stay there? Certainly they could stay there," Jordan District spokeswoman Melinda Colton said of the art. "The real answer to this is we don't know. This is one of the many things ... (transition teams are) going to have to determine."

The Rockwell depiction of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" schoolmaster is part of the Reid and Willda Beck Art Collection. Reid Beck, principal of Draper Park Elementary and Junior High School in 1924, encouraged the community to build its own art collection, according to the Draper Visual Arts Foundation's Web site. Children each year would sell raffle tickets and hand over change earned for chores.

In 1951, Draper Park's ninth-grade class took the $800 they had raised to the Springville art show. They fell in love with "Ichabod Crane," but $800 was short of the asking price, Baker said.

The students wrote Rockwell a letter telling about their school, town and art project and asked if he would accept $800 for the painting.

"He wrote back and said that he would do it," Baker said.

The painting is actually Rockwell's second "Ichabod Crane." The 1937 depiction of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" schoolmaster is housed at the Normal Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts.