#la giaconda
Jacqueline Kennedy and the Mona Lisa
Perhaps no other White House dinner had more personal meaning for Jacqueline Kennedy than the evening honoring French Minister of Culture André Malraux at the White House on May 11, 1962. The First Lady and Malraux had developed a friendship following a tour of Paris art museums during the Kennedy’s state visit to Paris in June 1961. By according him all the courtesies normally reserved for a head of state, the Kennedys hoped to focus national attention on the role of the arts in America and encourage the development of Washington as a cultural center.
At the end of the evening, Monsieur Malraux whispered a promise to Jacqueline Kennedy that he would send to her France’s most famous cultural treasure, La Giaconda–known as the Mona Lisa–to be displayed at the National Gallery in Washington. In December 1962, Malraux accompanied the painting to the United States where more than 700,000 people saw it at National Gallery of Art and more than a million others viewed it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
