For the visit of the President and First Lady to their city on the night of November 21-22, 1963, several citizens of Fort Worth arranged for an art exhibition in the Kennedys’ hotel suite. In this online lecture, Alexander Nemerov explores how one of the paintings in their suite, a swimming-hole picture by the 19th-century American painter Thomas Eakins, strangely relates to the last day of John F. Kennedy’s life.
Alexander Nemerov, PhD, has spoken and written extensively on American art and culture. In 2017 he gave the 66th annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and he appears in the recent HBO art-world documentary, The Price of Everything. Nemerov is the chair of the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University, where he is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities.
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Credit: Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), Swimming (detail), 1885, Oil on canvas, 27 3/8 x 36 3/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased by the Friends of Art, Fort Worth Art Association, 1925; acquired by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 1990, from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through grants and donations from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, the Anne Burnett and Charles Tandy Foundation, Capital Cities/ABC Foundation, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The R. D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation and the people of Fort Worth, 1990.19.1; Bob Richman