A custodianship of his original paintings and drawings was established with Rockwell's help near his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Norman Rockwell Museum is still open today year-round. The museum's collection includes more than 700 original Rockwell paintings, drawings, and studies. The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies at the Norman Rockwell Museum is a national research institute dedicated to American illustration art.
Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001. Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby's auction. A 12-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008. In 2008, Rockwell was named the official state artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The 2013 sale of Saying Grace for $46 million (including buyer's premium) established a new record price for Rockwell. Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Reading Public Museum and the Church History Museum in 2013-2014.
Films have made references to Rockwell's work. In Steven Spielberg's 1987 film Empire of the Sun, the film's protagonist, a young boy named Jamie Graham (played by Christian Bale), is put to bed by his loving parents in a scene also inspired by a Rockwell painting—a reproduction of which is later kept by the boy during his captivity in a prison camp ("Freedom from Fear", 1943). The 1994 film Forrest Gump includes a shot in a school that re-creates Rockwell's The Young Lady with the Shiner with young Forrest in place of the girl. Much of the film drew heavy visual inspiration from Rockwell's art. Film director George Lucas owns Rockwell's original of "The Peach Crop", and his colleague Steven Spielberg owns a sketch of Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. Each of the artworks hangs in the respective filmmaker's workspace. Rockwell is a major character in an episode of George Lucas' The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, "Passion for Life", portrayed by Lukas Haas.
Some albums and tracks have had inspiration taken from Rockwell. In 1981, Rockwell's painting Girl at Mirror was used for the cover of Prism's fifth studio album Small Change. "Dreamland", a track from Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace's 2009 album Burn Burn, was inspired by Rockwell's paintings. The cover for the Oingo Boingo album Only a Lad is a parody of the Boy Scouts of America 1960 official handbook cover illustrated by Rockwell. Lana Del Rey named her sixth studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019), after Rockwell.
Rockwell is among the figures depicted in Our Nation's 200th Birthday, The Telephone's 100th Birthday (1976) by Stanley Meltzoff for Bell System, which Meltzoff based on Rockwell's 1948 painting The Gossips.
Japanese carmaker Suzuki used excerpts from Rockwell's art in its 1986 brochure for the "Mighty Boy" small pickup truck, including an image that was on the cover of the April 29, 1922, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.
Museum director Thomas S. Buechner said that Rockwell's art is important for standing the test of time, "When the last half century is explored by the future, a few paintings will continue to communicate with the same immediacy and veracity they have today."
In 2005, May Corporation, which had previously bought Marshall Field's from Target Corp., was bought by Federated Department Stores. After the sale, Federated discovered that Rockwell's The Clock Mender displayed in the store was a reproduction. Rockwell had donated the painting, which depicts a repairman setting the time on one of the Marshall Field and Company Building clocks and was depicted on the cover of the November 3, 1945 Saturday Evening Post, to the store in 1948. Target had since donated the original to the Chicago History Museum.
On an anniversary of Norman Rockwell's birth, on February 3, 2010, Google featured Rockwell's iconic image of young love, "Boy and Girl Gazing at the Moon", which is also known as "Puppy Love", on its home page. The response was so great that day that the Norman Rockwell Museum's servers were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic.
In 2017, the original 1948 oil study for Tough Call (also known as Game Called Because of Rain), one of Rockwell's best-known baseball-themed works, sold for US $1.68 million at Heritage Auctions. The painting had hung for years in a Texas family's home before being identified as a Rockwell and becoming one of the highest prices ever achieved for a Rockwell study.
On November 2, 2025, the Norman Rockwell family published an essay in the opinion section of USA Today denouncing the Donald Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security's unauthorized use of several Rockwell paintings in social media posts along with nationalist slogans promoting anti-immigration policy initiatives.
If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color.