Mona Lisa in Camelot
How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci's Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation
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In December 1962, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa set sail from Paris to New York for what was arguably the riskiest art exhibition ever mounted. The fragile icon traveled like a head of state, with armed guards and military surveillance, in a temperature-controlled vault. Masterminding the entire show was First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who tirelessly campaigned to persuade National Gallery Director John Walker, French President Charles de Gaulle, and her own husband to debut the legendary smile here. For 88 charmed days, "Lisa Fever" swept the nation as nearly two million Americans attended exhibits in Washington, D.C. and New York. It was the greatest outpouring of appreciation for a single work of art in American history. And as only Jacqueline Kennedy could do, she infused America's first museum blockbuster show with a unique sense of pageantry, igniting a national love affair with the arts.
Gathering rare archival documents and interviews, acclaimed biographer Margaret Leslie Davis has woven a tantalizing saga, filled with international intrigue and the irresistible charm of Camelot and its queen.
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The 1963 American exhibition of the Mona Lisa in New York City and Washington, D.C., was America's first blockbuster art show, and Davis recounts in numbing detail the negotiations, preparations, flummoxes and successes of the exhibit. The exhibition was masterminded by the diplomatically savvy Mrs. Kennedy, whose personal relationships with French cultural minister Andr Malraux and National Gallery director John Walker overcame negative French press and concerns over subjecting a fragile artwork to a transatlantic journey. Heavily guarded and packed in a custom strong box, the Mona Lisa traveled in a first-class cabin on the USS France. Though Walker planned the exhibit with military precision, the opening ceremony was chaotic, and the painting was badly hung and poorly lit. Although Davis's (Rivers in the Desert) tale of the inner workings of a major art exhibition has its moments, it's undermined by padding (like the text of an imagined interview of LaGioconda by a "newspaper reporter with nothing to report") and the author's fawning over "Jackie." 16 pages of b&w photos.
