The Mona Lisa Gown
The Mona Lisa Gown
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy arranges the loan of the “Mona Lisa” from Paris to Washington to solidify Franco-American relations in 1963 at the height of the Cold War.
Kennedy wears a strapless pink chiffon evening dress designed by Oleg Cassini to the opening reception. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recounts: “there was nobody to touch Jackie using style as a political tool.”
The “Mona Lisa Show” becomes America’s first blockbuster museum show, and the painting, like Jackie herself, becomes a pop icon. Warhol begins his silk-screens of both the Mona Lisa and Jacqueline Kennedy this same year.
The Mona Lisa Gown, 2013. Steel, fabric, beads. 55 x 12 x 7 in. (139.7 x 30.5 x 20.3 cm.)
