Kennedy ghosts still walk in Washington 40 years after John F. Kennedy’s death, though they’ve grown friendlier with age. The past is on display this summer in “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Washington,” a citywide series in which an array of museums and cultural institutions from the National Gallery of Art to the Library of Congress pay tribute to Camelot’s queen. The former First Lady grew up in Washington, lived there for the entirety of her marriage to JFK and was perhaps the greatest cultural advocate the city has ever seen. So a weekend trip to Washington will provide a wealth of Kennedy memorabilia for history buffs and style mavens alike (for a complete list of events, visit www.dcheritage.org).
The biggest and most impressive exhibition is at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where more than 70 of Jackie’s gowns, dresses, suits and accessories are on display. Highlights include the crystalline gown the First Lady designed with Bergdorf-Goodman stylists for the inauguration ball and the pink and white Oleg Cassini she wore on a state visit to France. Designs from Cassini, Givenchy and Chanel serve as reminders of how much First Ladies can influence with their wardrobes (and how little they usually do).
Stunning as the clothes may be, the premise behind the Corcoran exhibition is somewhat flawed. Curators said they designed the exhibit to focus on history, not fashion, which is a noble and appropriate goal that mistakenly assumes that fashion and history have nothing to do with each other. The exhibit is organized around significant moments during Jackie’s tenure as First Lady: her visits to foreign countries, her most important state dinners and her renovation of the White House are all examined in depth. Visitors can sense subtle shifts in her fashion sense through the progression of these events, but the exhibit makes little effort to acknowledge or explain them. The show also fails to probe the impact of Jackie’s clothes by examining the American masses who cloned them. Few women could dress like Jackie in the early ’60s, but a lot of women tried. Photographs of their attempts might have put Jackie’s clothes in historical context. Visitors never really learn how Jackie evolved from well-dressed candidate’s wife who followed trends to fashion-forward First Lady who set trends herself. Clothes matter, the Corcoran show seems to say, but it never really explains why.
Still, a show that features 70 outfits from the closet of Jacqueline Kennedy can’t be all wrong, and the Corcoran exhibit is worth seeing purely as an aesthetic spectacle. Far less impressive, however, is “Remembering Mrs. Kennedy” at the National Gallery of Art. Jackie raided the gallery’s permanent collection in her efforts to spiff up the White House. She herself said that at the gallery, her “love of art was born” but visitors get little more than a display case highlighting Jackie’s gallery ties. The items on display-photos of Jackie’s visits to the gallery and excerpts from a (characteristically) flirtatious correspondence with the gallery’s former director, John Walker (“I will keep my fingers crossed and breath held until I hear from you,” Jackie writes at the end of a letter asking Walker for assistance in the White House project)-are charming but lack the gravitas the National Gallery attaches to blockbuster exhibitions. A sampling of Jackie’s favorite paintings from the gallery could’ve greatly added to “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Washington,” and it’s a shame that the city’s premier cultural institution didn’t want to play a bigger role.
Indeed, the most successful participants in “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Washington” are smaller museums that try to create exhibits Jackie would have liked instead of focusing on the limited items in their collection the First Lady actually touched. After carefully studying Jackie’s art selections for the White House restoration project, curators at the Phillips Collection created a tasteful and intriguing selection of works that fit in the Jackie mold. The tiny Woodrow Wilson House museum has recreated the setting for a luncheon hosted in Jackie’s honor by former First Lady Edith Wilson in 1961 and has brought back everything from the silverware to some unopened bottles of wine (things apparently didn’t get as wild as Mrs. Wilson had planned). Even the Bishop’s Garden at the (Episcopal) National Cathedral, a participant in the celebration despite a historical connection to the first Roman Catholic First Lady that is tenuous at best, are well worth visiting for a chance to sit in the shade, admire primroses and manicured lawns, put on dark sunglasses and feel very Jackie indeed. On their own, none of these sites justify a trip to Washington but viewed together they form a compelling guide to Jackie’s intrinsic style.
If “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Washington” has a shortcoming, it’s that it makes so little allusion to the tragic days at Camelot’s end. The final image in the Corcoran show is a photograph of Jack and Jackie riding in their open limousine on a bright sunny day, but it’s a picture from Washington in 1961 not Dallas in 1963. The exhibits hardly mention the pain and suffering so tied up in the Kennedy myth and focus exclusively on the Kennedys who came to power singing “Happy Days are Here Again.”
But maybe this historical blindness is somehow appropriate for Washington’s summer of 2002. Organizers planned the exhibitions as an attempt to lure back visitors frightened away from the capital after September 11. They were more than successful: the exhibits can be jammed. For a city that nervously wonders about suicide bombings and dirty bombs, “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Washington” is a welcome reminder of a Washington we didn’t have to flee.
