by Doug swore up and down that I’d been to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum with him. We searched high and low for evidence, finding nothing more than a picture of him at the museum in 2012, with him insisting it was me that took the photo.
So I went back on my own while we were in Boston, and nothing – and I mean, absolutely nothing – rang a bell to me. However, to be fair, it’s not a very memorable presidential library, in my opinion. (Full disclosure: it was renovated in 2019, so that could be part of why it didn’t ring any bells).
We’ve been to quite a few presidential sites at this point, and usually I walk away thinking “wow, that president accomplished/experienced a lot.” This museum had no such “wow.” It touched on a few big items and wasted a lot of space, I thought. It had one large room recreating his brother’s Attorney General office, and of course space for Jackie’s iconic fashions here and there. There was also quite a bit of space devoted simulated campaign stops, with chairs and campaign posters, but no substance. Literally one display was a fake store front with a campaign sign.
I thought they brushed over his childhood, and really gave no significant attention to almost anything, before or during his presidency (the Cuban Missile Crisis and the space race were notable exceptions). There were very few artifacts on display (and seriously, the pictures in this post sum it up well).
Even odder is how they handled the assassination, I thought. Literally you’re going along looking at stuff about his presidency, then turn a corner, and there are a few very small monitors in a wall showing his funeral, then it’s on to his legacy. You could seriously visit this museum not knowing he had been assassinated, and leave still not knowing it. I understand they don’t want to get into conspiracy theories, but this was SUCH a moment in history and it’s just not even talked about!
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963) was the 35th president of the United States (1961–1963). Though planning for the center began very soon after Kennedy’s death, it took a while to get going, with many changes to location, architecture, vision, etc. along the way. It finally opened in 1979, located on Columbia Point in southern Boston, Massachusetts. Kennedy was born and raised not far away in the Brookline area of Boston. The library’s architect was I. M. Pei, who was not as well known when he was selected for the project as he came to be later in his career.
