By Carol Tannenhauser
Do not miss “American Visionary: John F. Kennedy’s Life and Times,” opening at the New-York Historical Society on Friday, June 23rd, running through January 7th.
Based on a new book, JFK: A Vision for America, edited by Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley, it is one of the most extensively researched collections of Kennedy photographs ever assembled.
Some were taken by award-winning photojournalists, others from family albums, like the one below, snapped right before Kennedy left for Harvard.
Or the next, taken in a photo booth for five cents, one of the earliest pictures of him and Jackie together.
We know these tidbits because Smith is the son of Jean Kennedy Smith, JFK’s youngest sister and only surviving sibling.
“We went through about 34,000 images of President Kennedy in the 60s,” Smith said. Both the book and exhibition are meant to commemorate the centennial of his birth. “The point was not only to celebrate him as a glamorous and charismatic leader, but to celebrate his ideas and his vision for America.
“He had a vision for America as a great civilization; not only great militarily, but great morally. He believed that the arts were important to civic culture. He believed that science was important to the future of the United States and the world and that investing in science was a good thing to do and that’s why he launched the moon shot….He believed in equality of opportunity, hence the Civil Rights Act. He believed that people should serve their country, hence VISTA and the Peace Corps. He believed that America could be strengthened by diversity, hence his book A Nation of Immigrants.
“What we wanted to bring to people’s attention was this vision of America that we can still recapture,” Smith concluded. “We don’t have to be a nation that just pursues military spending and nationalism.”
“This is not just a group of iconic pictures. It’s the story of this man and his life and times,” said Lawrence Schiller, who co-curated the show with Marilyn Satin Kushner of the Historical Society. Among many other credits, Schiller was a young photojournalist, in what he called “the golden age of photojournalism,” assigned to cover the Nixon campaign against Kennedy in 1960. Schiller took the following photograph, catching a tear falling from Pat Nixon’s eye.
“The pictures are all presented in the same size, because nobody made prints larger than 11”x14” in the 60s,” Schiller explained. “And they’re all printed in the same technology that you would have had in the 60s. The work speaks for itself.”
The New-York Historical Society is located on CPW at 77th Street.
Hours:
Tuesday-Thursday, Saturday – 10am-6pm
Friday – 10am-8pm
Sunday – 11am-5pm
Monday – CLOSED
Reality-Check:
Before we get all misty-eyed about the “Camelot” symbolism of the Kennedy presidency, read the following from Wikipedia :
(A week after the assassination) “Jacqueline Kennedy summoned White to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port to rescue her husband’s legacy. She proposed that White prepare an article for Life magazine drawing a parallel between her husband and his administration to King Arthur and the mythical Camelot.”
White would later write that his essay was a “misreading of history. The magic Camelot of John F. Kennedy never existed.”
Better we should think of Camelot as:
1. A wonderful musical from “The Golden Age of Broadway Musicals”; and/or
2. A place for the clever and chic sheiks (NOT the thick sheiks) to park their camels.
I don’t get the feeling that a revival of the Camelot fantasy is the point of this exhibit. Actually, quite the contrary . . .
Why so negative? I don’t know how old you were when Kennedy was president, or if you’d even been born yet, but that was a safe and happy time for a lot of people. It doesn’t matter if the ‘image’ was concocted or not. That’s the way Jackie wanted him remembered. I’d much rather have my kids growing up admiring a president like Kennedy than the debacle that we’re dealing with now.
What is the “debacle” to which you sneeringly refer? That descriptive word might better be applied to the eight years of abysmal Presidential “leadership” of Barack Hussein Obama! As to JFK, I, too, came of age during the Kennedy Administration, and was, like so many others, beguiled by the youthful vigor and seeming “class” of our President and First Lady. It was only in the era that followed that we learned that indeed, All that glitters is NOT necessarily gold!
So you were beguiled by the Kennedy “class”. What’s happened to you now that you’re taken, it would seem, by the arch vulgarian who now occupies the oval office?
Even though JFK was flawed in some ways, I agree with Lynn wholeheartedly.
I also agree with Lynn and Tim!
Second.
Nonsense…thank God President Trump was elected to reverse the damage of the prior eight years. Obama worsened race relations, harmed the economy with excessive regulations and greatly increased dependency on government…but then again that was his voting base.
And Trump opened the doors to hell and unleashed the haters!
“harmed the economy with excessive regulation”
good lord, the Trump people seem to have willfully forgotten the Great Recession. or do you believe that was something Obama started?
“Obama worsened race relations”
this is such an ugly meme. I don’t agree with Obama on everything — i am well to his left, he was pretty much an Eisenhower Republican — but he and his family put up with almost constant racism, including from Donald Trump, the head birther, with incredible class, dignity, patience and forbearance. to say he “harmed race relations” is to turn reality on its head. or perhaps not to see the racism that still permeates our society, and that frequently rears its ugly head in the comments on this very site.
Get a grip! There is no debacle…except in the distorted minds of those who do not accept the truth that Hillary Clinton was the worst possible candidate the Democratic Party ever nominated for anything! The mainstream media needs to just get over itself, and the failed Obama Administration, that killed my husband!
Hillary was an atrocious nominee but I think Dukakis was worse.
Just a suggestion – if you’re going to tell someone to get a grip, you probably shouldn’t have a melt-down while typing it.
I’m confident that Elisabeth is just fine…
O.M. – gee!
Well said.
Did either of you bother to read the article? This isn’t about Obama so take your tirades elsewhere. As for Kennedy and Trump there is NO comparison.
Directly from the article on KENNEDY: “He had a vision for America as a great civilization; not only great militarily, but great morally. He believed that the arts were important to civic culture. He believed that science was important to the future of the United States and the world and that investing in science was a good thing to do and that’s why he launched the moon shot….He believed in equality of opportunity, hence the Civil Rights Act. He believed that people should serve their country, hence VISTA and the Peace Corps. He believed that America could be strengthened by diversity, hence his book A Nation of Immigrants.”
Thank you for the info WSR, I’m looking forward to seeing this exhibit in person!
Re: “He believed in equality of opportunity, hence the Civil Rights Act. ”
Sorry, but credit for that historic legislation MUST be given to President Johnson, although admittedly it WAS proposed by JFK.
As Wikipedia explains Kennedy’s good intentions were thwarted by the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, who vowed to never let it out of committee.
It was LBJ who, after the assassination, used his legendary negotiating skills to end the stalemate. Quoting Wikipedia: “Johnson made use of his experience in legislative politics, along with the bully pulpit he wielded as president, in support of the bill….Johnson, who wanted the bill passed as soon as possible, ensured that the bill would be quickly considered by the Senate.”
Yes, the same un-glamorous, rumpled, populist, pot-bellied, sometimes even vulgar Southern politician whom the elitist über-menschen Kennedy-clan detested (read Caro’s biography of LBJ) made sure the bill became law of the land…just as he would do for the equally revolutionary Medicare proposal in 1965.
You guys brought up Bush for eight years, so we’ve got 7+ years to go…better get used to it.
All that’s nice, but did he put his hand on a glowing orb in Saudi Arabia?
Huh? DID HE???
Good for you, Lynn and WSR! The nasty back and forth has no place here!