Once and Future Presidents
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For one week in July, Boston will be at the heart of the American political process. For it is then that the Democratic Party will convene in the city to nominate its candidate for the office of President. Thousands of delegates will gather to cast their votes at the Fleet Center, only a few blocks away from SPNEA's Otis House Museum. In an effort to introduce the conventioneers to SPNEA and the museum, the staff has planned a number of programs and activities. Among the offerings is an exhibition in July of photographs of John and Jacqueline Kennedy by noted photographer Verner Reed, whose collection is now in SPNEA's Library and Archives. Reed shot many of the images for Life and Time Magazine when Kennedy was still a Massachusetts senator. |
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Other activities include transforming the Otis House into a welcome center for the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Visitors from the convention will be able to take a tour of the Otis House, to learn about other historic sites on Beacon Hill, and to find information about places to eat and shop. In addition, the Otis House museum shop will offer postcards, maps, and items of local interest. While preparing for the Kennedy exhibition, the staff identified numerous images of other former presidents in the collection, a selection of which is presented here. This may surprise some who think that SPNEA's photographic holdings document only buildings and landscapes. To the contrary, the collections contain thousands of images of people, including politicians. The presidential images on these pages, dating from the 1840s to the 1950s and representing a variety of formats and styles, speak to the richness and diversity of SPNEA' s collections.
-Lorna Condon |
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