The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery today moved its portrait of Sen. Ted Kennedy by Andy Warhol to a newly created wall of remembrance.
Ted Kennedy is only the third person to be honored on the new wall, following Michael Jackson, and then Walter Cronkite, a National Portrait Gallery (NPG) spokeswoman told me.
"Only one person at a time is honored there," the spokeswoman said. "It's a very special place, very prominent, the first gallery as you walk in."
Warhol had created the work as a 1980 Presidential campaign fundraising tool, "enhancing the candidate's features with diamond dust, and thin red and blue lines, playing off the colors of the American flag."
However, Kennedy's campaign was lackluster at best, and he finally conceded to President Carter at the Democratic presidential nominating convention.
In Jimmy Carter’s memoir “Keeping Faith”, he wrote that news articles about the convention’s podium scene between Kennedy and himself “emphasized his (Kennedy’s) lack of enthusiasm as an indication that the spilt in our ranks had not healed. This accurate impression was quite damaging to our campaign, and was to linger for a long time.”
As we know, President Carter lost re-election solidly to Ronald Reagan. And as we also know, Senator Kennedy worked solidly, stolidly, and successfully to recreate his image.
Today, a silkscreen portrait sprinkled with diamond dust seems apt for the late senator, the last son of the Kennedy dynasty.
For more info: National Portrait Gallery, www.npg.si.edu, 8th and F Streets, NW, Washington, DC. 202-633-1000. Visitors' info.
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