Mona Lisa in Camelot by Margaret Leslie Davis

Author:Margaret Leslie Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press

It was left to Walker to orchestrate the massive occasion for Jackie, which was more like a queen’s coronation than the opening of a museum exhibition. Walker dictated to Mrs. Foy a remarkable list of categories for invitations to the private ceremony: All members of U.S. Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet (State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Post Office, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Health, Education, and Welfare); all of the heads of the executive offices (Budget, CIA, CEA, NSC, NASC, and OEP); former ambassadors to France; important donors to the Gallery; directors of Washington’s museums (Dumbarton Oaks, Phillips Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery, National Collection of Fine Arts, and the Freer Gallery); the heads of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Cultural Center; and all former trustees of the National Gallery of Art. In addition, Walker felt the need to add the presidents of the nation’s best universities; the Librarian of Congress; leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; plus a handful of prominent publishers, reporters, and newspaper columnists.

Once Jackie had submitted her lengthy list of names (which included every member of the extended Kennedy and Auchincloss families) and various White House requests, the guest list had mushroomed to nearly 2,000. Walker was hard-pressed to conceive of how he could possibly manage so many prominent guests at one time. Dozens of frantic phone calls occurred between the White House and the Gallery as the list was refined—and refined again. Some calls placed by Carter Brown to Tish Baldridge and members of her staff were only minutes apart as the appointed hour drew near.

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