Posted on 06/30/2026 2:19:19 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
She called me just prior to the inauguration," remembers Leroy Davis, a New York art dealer who served on Mrs. Kennedy's Fine Arts Committee for the White House. "She had heard about a Maurice Prendergast show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and though she didn't know much about him, she was intrigued. So I talked to her for quite a while and encouraged her to see the work. And when the show went to the Whitney in New York, I took her to see it."
Several months later, in 1961, during the Kennedys' triumphant state visit to Paris, their gift to President Charles de Gaulle was a Prendergast watercolor of a Paris scene, Boulevard des Capucins. It seemed to be a subtle way of saying that the art of America was equal to that of France.
Of course, Jacqueline Kennedy's greatest artistic contribution was her restoration of the White House. She took the Executive Mansion from a drab, hotel-like institution ("Early Statler," as she mordantly put it), virtually devoid of historical furnishings and paintings other than presidential portraits, and transformed it into one of the foremost collections of American decorative and fine arts. Although she made the White House into a museum, it was also very much a home—welcoming, unpretentious, and livable.
(Excerpt) Read more at housebeautiful.com ...
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That is, indeed, a SPLENDID Oval Office.
Her children were special in a way few other are. They could kiss their Onassis.
She invented Camelot-the idea. The myth. It was days after JFK was killed. The MSM ran with it.
who cares. What does it matter to what is happening to the republic today?? Sorry, but that is just how this Patriot feels.
“Most important, he had a religious faith, but I think at that time he was searching for something more definite.”
He asked me, ‘In this life, where does our own free will end and God’s will begin? Are we always responsible for our own actions, or is there a point at which God’s will takes over?’
I’m in ‘America Today’, and the death of JFK and his wife’s comportment as First Lady meant a lot to the development of my values in many ways. (And as President and First Lady, they were far superior to some we’ve had in recent decades.)
One might as well ask what does any historical fact or event mean to ‘today’...
I remember when this happened.
I also remember how shoddy poor Washington DC was looking in the late Eisenhower years when “Tempos”, temporary office buildings, filled every possible open grassy area.
I guess these were emergency office buildings put up to house the Navy and the War Department while the Pentagon was going up across the Potomac.
They only had a decade to remove them, but why rush.
A redneck trailer park would have looked better than that mess. If vandals had attacked those Tempos no one would have known the difference. But on the good side, America wasn’t covered in graffiti back then.
I watched an old school Secret Service guy weep as he described the men being forced to interact with and facilitate hookers for JFK.
JFK’s telling his teen girlfriend to perform oral sex on his friend, in front of him, at the White House Pool was horrible, and incredibly perverse.
“(And as President and First Lady, they were far superior to some we’ve had in recent decades.)”
The Kennedys were a handsome couple whether he was a good president or not. A mixed bag in the department. Mrs Kennedy stayed out of politics and wasn’t controversial.
John Kennedy was probably the best unscripted speaker to be President, matched only by Reagan. I remember his Presidency very well, I was growing up a stone’s throw from DC across the Potomac and politics was already my passion.
“I watched an old school Secret Service guy weep as he described the men being forced to interact with and facilitate hookers for JFK.”
Some of my friend’s dads worked at the White House and I remember them talking about JFK’s extracurricular adventures. Apparently he would sometimes ditch the Secret Service and drive himself to the Virginia side to meet girlfriends. I guess Jackie must have been home. They didn’t sound weepy, though.
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