Historian featured. Order your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold. Good evening, welcome, everyone. Im todd putman, members of our foundations board of dreshgts and all of my library and foundation colleagues, i thank you for joining us this evening. Let me acknowledge the generous underwriters of the kennedy underwriter forums, boston capital, the lowell institute, ratheon, and wbur and the boston globe. We considered have this Forum Last Night on the 50th anniversary of mrs. Kennedys tour, but didnt want to make you have to choose between sharing valentines day with loved ones or with your friends here at the Kennedy Library. So were so pleased to have so many of you with us this evening. 50 years ago Jacqueline Kennedy introduced herself to the nation. In many ways, the public already knew mrs. Kennedy through her role as the president s wife, mother of two children, and as the woman who charmed world leaders. But on february 14th, 1962, it was a more substantive Jacqueline Kennedy who guided viewers on a televised tour of the white house and the nation was transfixed. 46 million americans watched that night and an additional 10 million tuned in days later. The reviews described mrs. Kennedy as a virtuoso performer and with subbality and standard. My note relates to the day she spent taping the tour. After dinner she and president kennedy watched some outtakes with friends. Seeing how his wife had clearly outshined him in her portion compared to the clip in which he appeared the president asked cbs if it is possible to reshoot his segment the following morning. Essentially he followed the same script the next day but tried admirably to match his wifes charm, ease and engaging presence. You could decide how well he does when we watch that clip in a moment. Tonight well watch a portion of the tour and then it will our great honor to hear from the Current White House curator william allman. It is often said that nice guys finish last especially in our Nations Capital but bill allman is a wonderful exception to the rule. He became curator of the white house on august 1st, 2002 serving as assistant since 1976. No one has done more in recent years to preserve the white house and the historic collections and helping to update them to our times. Were delighted hes here with us this evening. After the film mr. Allman will give a brief slideshow presentation about the white house and then ill moderate a conversation with him during which time we welcome your questions. Three quick notes. Well be ending early to ensure mr. Allman catches his plane back to d. C. You could own your own copy of mrs. Kennedys tour, buying it outright in the museum store open after the forum and for a limited time if you make a purchase in the store or our estore were giving away free copies to mark the 50th anniversary. And this coming wb cbs sunday morning will air a story on mrs. Kennedy and the white house tour and i hope you all will tune in to that. Mrs. Kennedy was one of the founders of this library. It was a great hope that we would be a vital center of education and exchange which would grow and change with the times. I believe our forums, programs and exhibits continue to be guided by her spirit and i hope live up to the standard she set in her virtuoso performance 50 years ago. Lets relive that moment now together. A tour of the white house with mrs. John f. Kennedy. Created and produced by cbs news for the Cbs Television network. This is the white house as seen from the south lawn. For the next hour mrs. John f. Kennedy invites you to visit. Good evening, everybody. Do i need to use this . Okay. What id like to do for a few minutes is bring a little color to a black and white tv show. Some color pictures of how these rooms looked when mrs. Kennedy was doing it and then some pictures of how the rooms have changed since that time. Because i think mrs. Kennedy would been the very first person to say to everyone that what she was doing was a first step when she was asking people to donate things, well, maybe the very best things werent being offered at the time but when she had nothing you took a lot of things that were offered. So there have been improvements into the collection and growth in the collection and that is what she expected every first lady, president and first family to do, to contribute to the house remaining a museum and growing and becoming more interesting to the public. You see here the white house. And a picture of mrs. Kennedy during her televised taping, a color still picture taken showing her the blue room. One of the things the president talked about was how many people had come to visit. They had 1. 3 Million People in the year 1961. So it wasnt so much that the tour kicked off the interest in the white house, mrs. Kennedy had already attracted the public attention. She was she got early in 1961 congress to pass the law that she mentioned which didnt just protect the collection but established that the museum character of the public rooms of white house must be maintained in perpetuity and the secret service has a lot of say about the security issues, but the museum character was what she was so interested in grasping. Then she created the Curators Office also in 1961, with the idea that you needed a professional staff there to collect and preserve and interpret and conserve the pieces that she found in the house and the things that she was adding to the house. We actually have the dichotomy in our collection today. We still refer to the old collection, which was the stuff that mrs. Kennedy found that had survived the 19th century auctions and the giving away of official furnishings and then the new collection was everything she was collecting. But, in fact, those things, to a large extent, were older than the things that she already had in the socalled old collection. But she had lots of people coming to the white house because she made the public aware that she was making it into a museum. It increased nationwide the interest in Historic Preservation and old houses and the contents of old houses and so one of her early acquisitions was this little engraving. Well, im not advancing after all of our conversations. There we go. Sorry. Wrong button. This 1840 engraving was acquired as an archival object for the white house collection in 1961. And the engraver entitled the piece all creation going to the white house. Because even as early as 1840 they were envisioning that the public was attracted to the white house. In that period it was attracted because people like Andrew Jackson were living in the building. By 1961 mrs. Kennedy gave the house a whole new level of attraction as a Historic Site and a shrine to the presidency and a great museum of important american objects. So following through her tour route, basically you would see the upper lefthand corner the east room as she found it in 1961. Not too much has changed from what Theodore Roosevelt had done to the room in 1902 with the architects. The chandeliers, the torchiers, the cornices over the drapes dated from the 1902 period. You will see in the picture that the mantels are white and marble but mrs. Kennedy thought white was better and painted them. And that was fine for a long time. They were difficult to keep white. The paint chipped and such. And so you see in the lower righthand corner todays east room, as it was refurbished in the 1990s. The red mantels have been restored to their original color because they match the hearths and the baseboards. There were no carpets in the room in the 19th century but one of the things that First Lady Barbara Bush was asked that it was so reverberant, so these were delivered early in the Clinton Administration but designed using the plaster work of the ceiling, the 18th century english design feature of having carpets and ceilings reflect each other. Something that mrs. Kennedy would have appreciated greatly. So it makes the room less noisy. But it also takes away some of the opportunities that the children once had. The Theodore Roosevelt children were noted for roller skating around the room, and subsequent children have had attempts at recreating the mayhem of the Theodore Roosevelt kids. But the room is still used, is still left largely unfurnished and used for all sorts of parties and entertaining. This would have been where the president and mrs. Kennedy held the famous dinner for the nobel Prize Winners of the americas and president kennedy delivered the famous remark that i never quote quite correctly, but said never has so much talent been assembled in the white house except when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone. Oops. Too fast. There we go. She pointed out the great portrait of George Washington by gilbert stewart. This is our iconic object that was hung on the walls when the from the fire. You might have noticed that cbs news misspelled dolleys name in the captions, the subscription words there. It is d. O. L. L. E. Y. And this is the painting saved and restored and been in the house except for periods of construction. But i also point out to the right of this, mrs. Kennedy acquired things not just for the public rooms. There were things that were interesting and archival and some may have gone in storage or smaller rooms in the second and third floor of the house including this windsor desk chair which came to us as the temporary white house after the fire of 1814, the second night that James Madison was fleeing from the white house after Dolley Madison had grabbed the painting and took off in one direction and he run the government for one night in blockville, maryland, sitting in this little desk made by the owner of the house. She moved down the hall out of our normal tour route and got into the state lining room first. The picture of the upper left is how she would have found it. The black marble mantle piece is what was installed in the truman renovation. It is to surround. The big mantel that had the lions head changed to bison heads was removed and sent to the truman library. Mrs. Kennedy invited them to send the mantel back and it wasnt the curator but president truman said no, thank you, it is mine and im keeping it. What she was alluding to was she was having the same firm, kilmeade and white, create a wight marble version of the stone mantel installed in 1902 and you see that in the picture of the lower right which is after she was finished working on the room. She kept the drapes from the truman era and the table and chairs from 1902. New rug and new mantel. And here is the mantel piece showing the inscription conservatived in t inspection carved and they stalled the mantel in 1902 and he lived with it for six years and before leaving office mrs. Kennedy said the lion is not an american animal, fix it. And they to recarve the lion heads at American Bison heads. She cited the great monroe centerpiece that runs down the center of the dining table during most tours. It extends to 14 1 2 feet long and has 18 classical figures that hold up the candles. One interesting story, most of the time it is only five sections on the table and two sections in storage and it is a little difficult to see in this picture but athe bottom where the lady is in the black and white picture it has the companies name, the makers in france. Somehow this alluded mrs. Kennedys staff. They were only looking at the five sections and they wrote an article for antiques magazine attributing it to the firm because of the quality of the style, not knowing that they have a piece of it down in the basement that was signed by the makers. And she took them into the red room. Here you see the red room as it would have looked when he walked in and said, oh, my. This is a very important looking room. The red cloth was put on the walls in imitation of fabrics on the walls in the parlor since 1902 under Theodore Roosevelt. You could see in comparing these two pictures, a lot of the same furniture remains in todays room in the lower right as was put in by mrs. Kennedy. Probably the most in tact of the public rooms in terms of acquisitions remaining in constant use. Furniture dating from 1810 to 1830. You could see on the lefthand screen the beautiful gary cole is labelled and she cited in the tour that lon veer made spectacular furniture in new york. She saw empire as something worth collecting because the rest of the antiques world it wasnt colonial or maybe not antique yet and we wouldnt be able to find a table of this quality today. She cited the sofa behind it calling it the Dolley Madison sofa. Well that was a mistake at the time. It had no association with mrs. Madison. The paperwork said it was a style of the sofa mrs. Madison had and that got translated into the paperwork coming out of the curators that it was her sofa but the little one belonged to nelly custus which was a granddaughter and was replaced with the sofa on the lower right which has dolphinsar sea serpents carved for the legs an the arms. The blue room, as it looked when mrs. Kennedy took the tour. The heavy blue wall fabric from the truman renovation of 1952. She had the monroe furniture arriving in the room on the right hand screen the table and original chair before it was reup holstered. The table in the middle of the room was made by the carpentry shop and a big plywood disk. With a fabric covering. I think she was still working on the centerpiece of the room. She was looking for something truly more period and you see on the left the striped wallpaper and elements that she felt more in keeping with the monroe period. But it was criticized at the time. People said this drapery fabric running around the corners, it looks like a french ladies boudoirs. But she was more preshent, that is wallpaper snag that is a period document that we found in new york of the Smithsonian Design Museum and was installed in 1995 when the room was done again. What you see in the room is different wallpaper, different upholstery and carpeting but the feeling of the room that she created and she would be thrilled to think that more Historical Research was going into how to keep the room looking historic. She acquired one armed chair and two side chairs for this blue room furniture. And you see one of the two side chairs in its current fabric. This is a fabric mrs. Kennedy chose from a portrait of president monroe with an eagle on it. Thats gone through three different color combinations. It is one of two she acquired and she is marked. It is a little difficult to see but the bottom inscription is the french cabinet maker and it exists, you see what happens when people keep tacking upholstery to a frame that bears the makers name. So what we do today is what we call minimally invasive upholstery where you build up a structure inside of the chair and attach your fabrics to the new materials rather than to the old materials. The peer table that she cited as being in its original location is moved to the Entrance Hall because we acquired in 1979 the sofa from the set and thats the only wall long enough to take a 9 foot sofa. There are several of the 53 pieces back in the original monroe suite. And there is her chair. On the left in the nixon era fabric, on the right is the way the chair looks today. We found this first chair she received was the most in tact of all of the chairs that we know of. There are some in other Museum Collections as well. So for an exhibition right now the at smithsonian gallery about the Decorative Arts of the white house, we were working on restoring the chair to its original appearance and so it would have had red fabric as mrs. Kennedy told us and it would have had this really high sheen polished almost metallike finish to the gold leaf surface. Sorry, my finger is too fast. She was also very interested in adding to the portrait collection. Now when she arrived at the white house, the Art Collection was almost exclusively portraits but she saw about getting real life portraits by some letter artists or copies of gill pert stewart should be replaced so she acquired the Thomas Jefferson by rembrandt peele and then the first ladies have added. Monroe at the upper right and madison at the lower left were acquired in the Johnson Administration. Monroe by samuel morris, thein venter of the telegraph who wanted to be known as a portrait painter and artist. Madison vander lynn and then the Reagan Administration acquired by john trumbull. So weve been adding consistent with mrs. Kennedys interest in that activity. There is the green room. When she had started decorating it, it still had the heavy green fabric of the color and she started adding this federal style furniture about the period 1800. Two views of that room. Here is a black and white picture of the wall that shows the Daniel Webster sofa that she cited and that is in the upper righthand corner and in front of that is a wonderful baltimore card table. One of my favorite pieces because of the inlays and veneering on this piece. Both of these pieces have not been used in the house for a while and so we selected them as our examples of the perfection of what mrs. Kennedy was doing at the time and they are in the exhibit right now. When she got finished with the room, she installed this silk wall fal fabric with her federal collection and a proper period style rug. There is the Angelica Van Buren portrait cited in the tour which was over the fireplace when she gave the tour. But other parts of the tour mentioned they were collecting other art including this portrait of Benjamin Franklin by david martin over the fireplace as she intended it to be. And she moved mrs. Van buren over just past the chandelier on the left. The green room in the Nixon Administration, it was decided that the federal furniture mrs. Kennedys time was perhaps not the strongest pieces for rooms with very high ceilings and large scale and so it was replaced with furniture made by the new york workshop of duncan fife. About 1800 to 1810. The wonderful chairs at the upper right, she acquired a set of four of those. They werent used in the green room until the Nixon Administration and they perfect to add to the collection and also in contrast that fife style in the upper right and the simple chair at the lowest left, however this is a curatorss delight. It was inscribed by the upholstery person and it was purchased october 1811. So most furniture doesnt get that much curatorial information. And then the green room as you see it today. That is the third set of changes since mrs. Kennedys time. Still the silk fabric survived in each case. It has been replaced but considered a key element of the room. The nixon era furniture has largely been kept but weve made a new rug and some new upholstery. She was interested beyond the portraits and so what you see in this picture, the lower left painting was acquired by for mrs. Laura bush, a 1947 painting called the builders and she wanted it to go into the public rooms just as kennedy thought it should be added to the public rooms so it was decided to put it in the green room. Well we dont own a lot of abstract art. This might be harsh for mrs. Kennedys taste when she was looking for things that were early american but the collection is growing an the interest in all periods is growing so were able to pair with it this john marin portrait. She found light and easy and useful upstairs and now it was more abstract and interesting as a par for the builders. Above that painting on the wall you see at the far left of the green room scene is a wonderful john singer sergeant painting called the mosquito net and this is acquired early in the Johnson Administration as a gift in memory of president kennedy and so i think mrs. Kennedy would have been pleased that several great paintings were donated by great collectors who wanted to remember their contributions to the white house. The lincoln bedroom, as mrs. Kennedy found it in 1961 on the left, carpet had been installed in the truman renovation and the mirror and the mantel wasnt period but most of the furniture was. It was still an interesting room. The lower right evolved and didnt change very much in the early 2000s it was still the 1952 carpet down on the floor after 50 years of use. The furniture, the lincoln bed and the center table. But this was one where in 2004 First Lady Laura Bush said could we visit a refreshing of this room and go back to the period documents and do it as right as we can. I think mrs. Kennedy would have found that enormously gratifying because she used historic documents to put things in original places and design things correctly. So it is a little bit more victorian than it was then. But now the lincoln bed with a proper recreation of the crown or the cornus, carpeting based on Lincoln Office and upholstery based on period things so it is stronger than in her time but still one of the principal guest bedrooms in the white house. And she moved next door to the treaty room, referred to as the monroe room. Here is would have been in the 19th century when it was the president s cabinet room. You could see the sofa she mentioned in the lefthand in the back under the portrait of George Washington. And there is president clevelands Cabinet Meeting around it in the 1890s. There is a color picture, only lightly colored of how that when she walked into the room and said this is the chamber of horrors because it was so many things that werent yet assembled and finalized and similar in the lower right of how the room was finished when she was done. She did in fact pick that border that came out of the peterson house, where president lincoln died and it was put on the green flocked wallpaper. Victorian drapes and the big grant cabinet table down the middle of the room. So it stayed this way until president george bushs administration. And the room was starting to wear out. The fabrics were getting threat bare and he said i like this sort of Conference Room idea but i would like to have a private office to have more intimate meetings and that is the way the room has remained since then and several iterations including the finished room, mrs. Kennedys room at the upper left and the george w. Bush version of the office. Still using the big treaty table as his desk and the grant sofa under the portrait of president grant between the windows and a great painting behind the desk of the signing of the peace protocol that ended the spanish american war. And president kennedy alluded in the full version of the tape that the fact that they were not going to the west wing. But i thought id bring to your attention, he did mention in the tape that he sat at the famous resolute desk. This was placed in the oval office by mrs. Kennedy. It had been in the private quarters until that time but she thought it should be the most visible desk the president would sit at. It was given to president haze by Queen Victoria in 1880 and comes with two interesting photographs for the Kennedy Library grouping here and the famous of john jr. Coming out through the knee hole under the desk as the president s working at it and then a more recent photograph of caroline in the office as president obama trying to figure out how to go under the desk and open the door. And the look on her face is like, please, mr. President , just stop. But so the only time mrs. Kennedy came back to the white house was for a private unveiling of her paortrait and the president s portrait. And she came back and it was done very low key. She made her mark and felt it was time now to leave the white house to her successors and so that is what we today, is try to assist along with the National Park service and the White House Historical association also celebrating the 50th anniversary to provide the resources and the expertise necessary for each new first family to leave their mark on the house. And so now well have some questions and answers, i hope. Thank you. [ applause ] well, first thank you so much for that wonderful tour. That was wonderful to watch and observe. I notice in a recent New York Times interview you talked about really the challenge of having this be a museum but also a home for a family and as curator just give us a sense of some of how you balance the use of the home and also maintaining it as a museum. Well, first you take a deep breath. I mean, what we are and what mrs. Kennedy knew we would be is the official home and office for the president of the United States. And so she still wanted to put great things in the room so every guest who came, whether they were tourists or invited guests, and diplomat foreign visitors, would see the best things that she could acquire that were made in america. And to draw out of storage things that she could give new importance to that had survived all of those unfortunate 19th century sales of white house contents. And so for us it is the idea that the public tour is probably doing the least amount of damage because theyre sent on a regimented path through the house and dont get to touch too many things but there are still tables along the north green and red room that you will find chewing gum attached to the underside of the table. There was the day when one lady who had the baby in the front pack leaned over, i think to read the label on the wonderful john singer sergeant painting which i forgot to tell you the name of, it is called the mosquito net, to read the label and the baby reached out and grabbed the chinese bowl on the table and threw it on the floor. The woman was mortified and had never anticipated that baby was going to be so aggressive with the collection. But unfortunately it was a pair of bowls that were in longer a pair. Because one bowl is great but two are better. And so you have those kind of things. At parties you have sometimes people who just either they leave their manners at home or they dont have any. Im not sure exactly what. The butler told us one night they walked into the blue room, the Big Wonderful sofa there was a glass of red wine standing in the middle of the sofa. Maybe somebody got up and absently left it there but it is an accident waiting to happen. And they said there was a man in the red room with his foot on the sofa. What do you say. Excuse me, sir, youre a blank. If hes sick, if he needs to lie down, we understand. But otherwise, that is not very good behavior. But it is a remarkable tribute, i think, to the early american craftsmanship that the pieces hold up. You come to a party and you sit on the chairs and you walk on the carpets and you eat off the china. We do have glass tops on most of the tables in the public rooms because it is easier to save spill of an alcoholic beverage if it is rolling off the edge of the table than just sitting on it eating through the fine finish. But you have to reup holster things and we do the minimum invasive upholstery where you dont tack to the frame, you tact to additional materials that are added to the chairs and the sofa. But it is just sometimes you kind of scratch your head and whether something happens go well we couldnt have anticipated that one could we and we move on and work with conservatives. They provide a furniture conservativor. And they could do work onsite and not send things out for costly and timely repairs. We have somebody assigned at our support facility who helps care for the furniture and other conservation needs for the house. So there is a difference between the public and the private rooms. But one of the comparisons between the kennedy and the obama is there is now a young Family Living in the white house. Does that change your role or the life in the white house to have teenagers and the portuguese water dog running about the premises . Weve been really, really fortunate. These are great kids and a great dog. And there hasnt been one report of damage of any sort as a result of childhood exuberance or bad doggy behavior. But there have been times when you sort of wonder what could you say to a first lady if she picks a piece out of storage because she wanted to put it in a childrens room and youre sitting there going, cant you pick something less important or less easily damaged. And most of the time i think the first ladies and the president s want honest advice. They dont want bad things to happen on their watch. They really dont. That is why the public rooms are administered partly by our office but also by the committee for the preservation of the white house created by president johnson to re place mrs. Kennedys Fine Arts Commission with a formally structured organization. And their goal is to preserve the rooms and prevent the family for getting blame for change because we have collectively decided on it, it shouldnt be blamed on the first lady, it should be the committees responsibility to take whatever heat might come from the press. But the private quarters are still in the white house collection and we have to dieea with the fact that things go up there. And in some cases, the fact that we dont expose anything from our collection now is so that a new first family could come in and maybe they like to pick a truman renovation reproduction rather than the duncan fife next to the glass and if you knock it over in the middle of the night you dont come up with a damaged table in the morning. Well again to take questions from the audience in just a minute so if you have them line up at microphones. They mentioned 1. 3 million visitors 50 years ago. How many do you have coming through on the public tours. I think the numbers now are about 700,000. And that doesnt reflect a loss of president kennedys optimism for twice that many. I dont think we could handle twice that many. But after september 11th, 2001 it was close the and gradually reopened and the old habit of well in the original days you lined up at the fence line and if you were in line by noon you got into the tour and after that they decided to give out time tickets so you could not spend your whole morning standing along the fence and allow you to do other things. But it is required that you have to go to your Congress Person and submit information to be cleared through the secret service data base. So it is cut down maybe not quite 50 on the visitation. But still most museums and Historic Sites would die for 700,000 visitors a year. So were still the most visited Historic House in the world, i think. We have a question here. In the original broadcast, mrs. Kennedy showed a shot in which upholstery was done on site and were there other craftsman where pieces were sent out for work to be done in other locations during mrs. Kennedys overseeing of the renovation. Yeah. And if so is there a way to find out any way to actually research that . My grandparents have an upholstery business and renovation furniture renovation and its always been said within my family that they did some work, maybe just a piece, i dont know. So it has always been something ive been interested to try to research. It is possible. Its possible. It wasnt just exclusively done by larry rodda in the cabinet making shop. Especially the reproduction chairs in the blue room, that was done by an outside firm and sent to an outside upholstery to do a batch job. Were welcome to have a inquiry. Doesnt mean the paperwork was as thorough as they are today. Not they they werent tried but over flowing with things at that day. And the story that grandmother always said this piece came from the white house. And we know there were sales and we know this is possible. And we try to answer them as thoroughly as we can that we cant say for certain but we cant deny in a lot of cases. My grandparents were good record keepers. Whenever they might have been maybe the history detectives could help. We have a question over here. Yes. Im interested if you have any stories of vips perhaps trying to take souvenirs home with them and how your staff deals with that . Well, you stop putting demy task spoons on the table that says president s house on it because that is the last course and the butlers wont pick them up until the guests have left the table. So you cant monitor that theyre putting the fancy little spoons with the words president s house on it in their pockets. That is one way. There have been some stories that i cant confirm of political figures putting a tray down their pants, to try to escape with a piece of silver. We were acquired by law to do an annual inventory of everything in the house. Now we have 50,000 objects in our collection. And probably 30,000 is table ware. Because we count every knife, fork, spoon, plate and dish and some may be missing and some may be breakage and some may have gone in the trash or down the Garbage Disposal and some have been per loined. It doesnt mean if they are collectors of president ial china who often have things that are fine to have because prior to recent times people if a service got broken down to a few pieces they would have sold it in the 19th century or given it away. Ive had a collector one time tell me president kennedy tried to give him the cup and saucer they were drinking out in the oval office. No, mr. President , that is the white houses. I cant confirm that story. That is a second hand story. But i think the president and first lady are careful with things today. But we have a lot of guests. Question here. I have two questions that are related. One, did mrs. Kennedy have a curator such as yourself in house when she was there . And, two, she mentions a painting that was borrowed from the Boston Museum in the dining room and i know there are a number of other paintings borrowed from various collections in her time. Is that something that she innovated and is it being carried on today . Yes, she had a curator. She was it was lorraine pierce. She was boreoyed from the smithsonian. She worked for about a year and then there has been four curators before me, after her. So im sixth in the line. So there has been some presence ever since mrs. Kennedy started the Museum Program and said we have to have at least one professional person. She actually had two other women working with lor lane pierce because they receiving letters and objects and offers of things an donations and they need to process the same way we do today to keep the best possible records to do the research to try to document whether they wanted something or not. The borrowing of paintings happens. She was the first person no, she wasnt the first person because we had lone paintings in the Eisenhower Truman administration. I think the Boston Museum was her massachusetts contact had an option there. She hung those two paintings in the state dining room and that is the only time there has been more than one painting in the state dining room. That portrait of lincoln is the principal object in the room. In fact, the walls where she hung toz paintings, the sconces have been hung on the pylon and theyve since been moved to the walls where they seem to better belong and now there is no room in the room to hang another painting. But we continue to borrow as needed. Sometimes it is to meet the tastes of the first family. Usually for the private quarters. We try to have the public rooms focus on our permanent collection, the things that belonged to the nation for the white house. The only exception on the state floor is a portrait of mrs. Monroe that belongs to the monroe family and we havent managed to talk them into donating it to us yet so it is still on loan since 1970. So the same thing was true of Dolley Madison. The portrait of her was on loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine arts from 1970 until 1996 when we finally talked the museum into selling us a workout of the collection because they said wait a minute, it belongs in the white house and so much better than it did in their collection. So mostly what we borrow now is frequently to meet like this administration, president obama are very interested in abstract, modern art we dont have in collection yet so there are painting weve gathered in washington for the private quarters and the oval office that fulfill their desires. Last question. Actually, i have two. If you dont mind. My first question is under which president since john f. Kennedy has there been the most change to the white house . Actually, the Nixon Administration was probably the largest number of objects acquired, even more than the kennedy administration. Mrs. Nixon very much admired what mrs. Kennedy had done and wanted to improve the collection and increase the collection and take very little credit for it. Mrs. Kennedy had already set the path. She didnt need to go out and ask people to donate as much because mrs. Kennedy set the standard for what every first lady could rely on the public understanding. So she hired a curator. The man who hired me for my job in subsequent years. And they worked very hard. And so they kept a lot of kennedy things in some of the rooms and changed out kennedy things in other rooms but all of the pieces are permanently and they will come back into use from time to time as different first ladies and president s choose from them. My second question is on the Art Collection. It was interesting when you were talking about the builders and how you paired that painting which is more modern with slightly more traditional. And as tastes change and we get further and further away from the modern art period and more contemporary art, how do you mix in pieces from that time period which might not necessarily match with the style of some of the rooms in the house . I dont think were as locked into stylish issues as people once were perhaps. There were plenty of paintings going into the rooms that were 50, 60 years later than the style of the room. But because they were traditional paintings, they were sort of accepted as being all right. When mrs. Kennedys portrait arrived, it was exceptionally controversial. Aaron chickler painted that full length picture of mrs. Kennedy that i showed at the end, some people whether it first arrived, they said it looks like shes wearing her pajamas. She looks like a ghost. It is a hard picture for people to accept because it was a knew and unusual style for a portrait. I think well have that day when we want to hang Jackson Pollock in the green room and we have to decide if that is okay. I think it is the scale of modern art more than the style of modern art that may be the hindrance for us. Do you want to give up an entire wall to one painting when you could have two to four paintings in the same space. So it will come. Maybe not on my watch. But not because i object to it, but because i dont know im going to be there when the great Jackson Pollock arrives. So we dont want to promote any hidden secrets that dont truly exist the way sometimes when you watch National Treasure movies, there are secret compartments behind desks. But the next time all of us go to the us what, what is one small thing that you might have us look for that the normal visitor might not know . One intricacy or specialty of the house that only the curator would have us take a look to see. Hmm. Wow that is kind of like the question what is your favorite object in the house. It is like, well, on 9 11 2001 it could be something i carried under my arm that told us to get out. Which is into the George Washington or the portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. I would probably get shot for being a looter on the street if i see this coming out the white house. So, thats a tough one. Ill tell a story on the painting i showed you, the mosquito net. It is a great painting. It was in sergeants collection until his death. And it is a friend asleep under a mosquito net. But it hangs in a room where most of the portraits are president s or first ladies and it is obviously a depiction of a person and with the draped mosquito net, people would come in and say which first lady is dying in that painting . Because they assume it is a shroud or something. If you go in the red room, there is two wonderful sconces that flank the sofa on the east wall and the eagle and that holds a clain in its mouth with the ball on the end and they were made in england. They realized you make it with eagles and the americans will buy it. It doesnt matt fer we were at war, commerce is more important. And so people ask all of the time, what does it mean . What does this ball and chain mean. And people have said, is it casting off the chains of british tyranny in the american revolution, linking itself to the World Community . But one of the tour officers and these are members of the United States secret service so you try not to criticize them too heavily. When asked that question, these are about 12, 13 feet apart. When someone said what does it mean this fellow, and i was in the room at the time and witnessed him saying it. You pull the two chains simultaneously and flush all of the toilets in the white house. And a room full of tourists went wow. And im in the back of the room going no. So look for the sconces. Thank you all so much for coming. Thank you, bill. [ applause ] it was great. If enjoyed watching first ladies pick up a copy of the book first ladies influence and image of the nations first ladies through interviews with hop historians. Now available in paper back, hard cover or as an ebook. Tonight on American History tv beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, a look at the lives of Lady Bird Johnson and pat nixon. Cspan in cooperation with the White House Historical association produced a series on the first ladies, examining private lives an the public roles they played. First ladies, influence and image features individual biographies of the women who served in the role of first lady over 44 administrations. Watch American History tv tonight on cspan3. This is a crisis. People are losing their lives. With Police Reform taking center stage in congress, watch our live unfiltered coverage of the latest developments. Plus the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic. We were going down from 30,000 to 25 to 20 and now we sort of stayed about flat and now were going up. And briefings from the white house on foreign affairs. Congress on health care. Insight from former administration officials. But i think there is a line one should not cross where governmental power is used essentially exclusively for personal benefit. We will stand proud and we will stand tall. And the latest from the campaign 2020 trail. Join in the conversation every day on our live callin