AMERICAN MOSAIC #822 - Jacqueline Kennedy Exhibit

By Jerilyn Watson

HOST:

Thousands of people are visiting a museum show in New York City about Jacqueline Kennedy. She was the wife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing many of the clothes she wore when she lived in the White House.

The exhibit will be open through July Twenty-Ninth. Then it will move to the Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts. Sarah Long tells us more about it.

ANNCR:

Jacqueline Kennedy was thirty-one years old when her husband was elected president in Nineteen-Sixty. She was a beautiful woman with dark hair and dark eyes. She loved to wear beautiful clothes.Many American women wanted to look like her. They copied her clothes and the way she wore her hair.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit begins with the clothes Missus Kennedy wore during the presidential campaign. Then the visitor sees clothes from the White House years. These include travel clothes, everyday dresses and long gowns for official state dinners.Missus Kennedy liked to ride horses and her riding clothes also are shown.

All the clothes are simple. But the materials are rich.Jacqueline Kennedy often wore the colors of the spring season. She liked light green, blue, pink and yellow. Her evening gowns were often creamy white and shining. World famous designer Oleg Cassini created some of her finest clothes for important events. For example, he designed the dress she wore at her husband's inauguration ceremony. And he designed the black dress Missus Kennedy wore to meet Pope John the Twenty-Third.

Clothes are not the only objects in the exhibit. Music and videos play.News photos and magazine covers help tell the story of Missus Kennedy's clothes. They also help visitors remember her work in restoring the White House and supporting the arts in America.

Jacqueline Kennedy's White House years came to an unexpected and terrible end in Nineteen-Sixty-Three when President Kennedy was murdered.Missus Kennedy continued to be a leader in women's clothing fashions until she died in Nineteen-Ninety-Four. But she always said she wanted people to know there was a brain under her fine hats.