èßäAV

The Kennedys made a State Visit to France in 1961 where they were welcomed by cultural minister André Malraux and celebrated in the French media. On May 11, 1962, the Kennedys held a dinner for Malraux with a guest list of American playwrights, novelists, dancers, Broadway stars, and painters.

After touring the National Gallery of Art with Mrs. Kennedy, Malraux told the press he thought France would lend its most prized painting, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, to the United States. The painting arrived the following January where it became the first blockbuster exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seen by a million and a half visitors.

Initiated by Mrs. Kennedy, the “Musical Programs for Youth by Youth” series was just one way the Kennedys promoted access to the arts for everyone. The first performance was held on August 22, 1961, for an audience of young people with disabilities.

Other performing arts initiatives for young people included The Embassy Youth Concert featuring the Paul Winter Sextet and The White House Seminar Jazz Concert featuring Dave Brubeck and Tony Bennett. Kennedy liked to address these audiences, and he often promised the young performers he would be listening to them through an open office door while he worked.

On April 29, 1962, the Kennedys hosted a dinner honoring 49 Nobel Prize winners then living in the Western Hemisphere, all but three in the United States. Additional guests included intellectuals and scientists such as James Baldwin, Robert Frost, and the astronaut John Glenn. The Kennedys even invited two scientists from opposing sides of the nuclear debate, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had developed the atomic bomb, and physicist Linus Pauling, who had spent the hours before the dinner protesting nuclear testing outside the White House gates.

LIFE magazine declared, “this was the President’s party.” Kennedy himself quipped that the dinner was “the President’s Easter Egghead Roll.” But the dinner had a serious purpose. It showcased American leadership in science, medicine, literature, and peace.

On November 13, 1961, 84-year-old cellist Pablo Casals performed at the White House for the first time since performing for Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. The occasion was a State Dinner for the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín. The audience included musicians, journalists, music critics, diplomats, and composers including Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.

Casals had been living in self-imposed exile from his native Spain in opposition to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Yet he saw in Kennedy hope for a peaceful and free future. In a letter accepting the invitation to perform, he wrote, “May the music that I will play for you and for your friends symbolize my deep feelings for the American people and the faith and confidence we all have in you as a leader of the Free World.”

The Kennedys hosted a dinner at the White House in honor of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and First Lady Marie-Thérèse Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast. American Ballet Theatre performed Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid with music by American composer Aaron Copland for the occasion.