Artist Rockwell Kent was once the darling of the schoolboy set, renowned for his illustrated versions of Shakespeare and Moby Dick. But Kent was also an avowed Communist and staunch defender of the Soviet Union whose political leanings led to a high-profile tiff with a small museum in Maine, which Kent accused of having refused an exhibition of his work. Now, nearly half a century after the flap, the Farnsworth Museum has mounted an exhibition focusing on the controversy, and attempting to refute Kent’s claims of anti-Communist hysteria.