


The exhibit, "Jacqueline Kennedy Entertains: The Art of the White House Dinner," runs through March 30, 2008.


"Jackie inaugurated a whole new way of entertaining," said museum curator Frank Rigg. "(The exhibit) displays the whole entertaining aspect of the Kennedy White House.


"(She felt) the White House should be an emblem of the American public, a place America could be proud of," Rigg said. "She had an ulterior motive; the White House should be a stage of promoting American culture."






"In many ways, the ways the Kennedys entertained represented American culture," Rigg said. "This was a campaign on her behalf. She hoped to establish a cabinet post, the Minister of Culture, and even had someone chosen - Richard Goodwin, Doris Kearns Goodwin's husband. The announcement (of the post) was planned to happen after they got back from Dallas. It never happened." That was November 1963, and President Kennedy was assassinated while on that trip.


"It started a whole new trend in how they entertained," said Rigg. "Retrospectively, when people think about Camelot...people looked back on this (the entertaining) as a magical era. People in America weren't used to it.



"Giving a dinner for a minister was unusual; they were mostly (for) heads of state," said Rigg. "The French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux exemplified many of the qualities the Kennedys admired, including culture and intelligence. They developed a friendship (with Malraux). Out of it, the Mona Lisa came to the United States. He (Malraux) promised her (Mrs. Kennedy). It was a major triumph for her."


Following the dinner for Malraux, there was a thank you letter from actress Geraldine Page, who had been a guest that evening, addressed to "Dear First Lady." In part the note read, "You remind us all of who we can be and the re-establishing of values in bringing us all to life again."


"We'd done '(Jacqueline) Kennedy: The White House Years,' and we thought we'd done that (but) a lot of people didn't see that," Rigg said. "We kept getting requests. We thought we could take a unique aspect of the White House (and present it in this exhibit). People seem quite pleased with this."


Exiting the exhibit leads visitors to the 115-foot-high glass pavilion facing the Atlantic Ocean. "I.M. Pei (architect of the JFK Library) called this the meditation pavilion," said Rigg.


Prescient and uplifting at the same time.





For more information, call 866-JFK-1960 or visit