From Jacqueline Kennedy’s Famed Restoration of the White House: A Signed Photograph of Her With the First White House Curator, Loraine Pearce, in the Curator’s Office, Examining the Latest Treasure to Arrive

Part of Mrs. Kennedy's artistic revival of the Executive Mansion, which captivated the American people and remains her greatest legacy.

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A newly discovered and uncommon signed photograph, as she would want us to remember the Camelot years

From the moment that John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, it was clear that the incoming First Family would bring an unaccustomed sense of style, grace and optimism to the White House....

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From Jacqueline Kennedy’s Famed Restoration of the White House: A Signed Photograph of Her With the First White House Curator, Loraine Pearce, in the Curator’s Office, Examining the Latest Treasure to Arrive

Part of Mrs. Kennedy's artistic revival of the Executive Mansion, which captivated the American people and remains her greatest legacy.

A newly discovered and uncommon signed photograph, as she would want us to remember the Camelot years

From the moment that John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, it was clear that the incoming First Family would bring an unaccustomed sense of style, grace and optimism to the White House. Jacqueline Kennedy was a young woman of notable beauty, at once wistful and luminous, and of acute intelligence and exacting expectation. Her response to life was aesthetic, and to her appreciation of the arts, Mrs. Kennedy added a passionate sense of history. These qualities made her the ideal person to initiate a quest to bring beauty and history to the White House, one that was brilliantly executed, and led to the most influential redecoration in its history.

On February 23, 1961, hardly a month after the inauguration, the 12-member Fine Arts Committee for the White House came into existence as a body empowered to develop restoration plans and "locate authentic furniture of the date of the building of the White House and raise funds to purchase this furniture as gifts." Henry F. du Pont, founder of the Winterthur Museum and revered as the most important collector of American decorative arts of his day, was named chair with Mrs. Kennedy serving as honorary chair. The grand parlors – the Green Room, Red Room, and Blue Room – were deemed the areas of highest priority. The State Dining Room and the East Room, at either end of the house, were equally high-profile areas for the committee. A primary aim was to procure furniture, furnishings, and artwork that was either owned by previous presidents or representative of particular periods in the building’s history. The Fine Arts Committee and its devoted members would send out pleas for furniture, paintings, busts, chandeliers, rugs and other items that had been or might have been at one time or another in the Executive Mansion. They were astonished by the response, as they were barraged with offers from extraordinary presidential heirlooms to old quilts, spittoons, candlesticks, and paintings. Mrs. Kennedy’s next goal was to create and staff a White House infrastructure to accomplish this project and others in the future. On March 29, Winterthur-trained Lorraine Pearce was appointed the first curator of the White House.

Photograph signed by both the First Lady and  Lorraine Pearce, in the White House curator’s office, Washington, May 1961-February 1962,  a 6 1/4 by 9 1/4 inch image matted to 8 3/4 by 12 3/4 inches, picturing them pitching in and unwrapping what appears to be antique candlesticks that were joining the White House collection. We obtained this directly from a friend of Mrs. Pearce, and it has never before been offered for sale.

Mrs. Kennedy’s efforts to restore the executive mansion won enthusiastic national support. For three days in January 1962, CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood was filmed interviewing her on a first-ever behind-the-scenes tour of the history, rooms, and contents of the White House. An estimated 80 million viewers watched the hour-long tour broadcast on all three national networks on Valentine’s Day that year, and what they saw was clearly of enduring significance. It had to much to do with the Kennedy years being remembered by many as “Camelot”.

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