Kennedy and the Arts: His Unprecedented Invitation of Scholars, Artists, Writers, and Thinkers to His Inauguration

Background

Yes, I was on the Inaugural Committee and...I asked...whether they had any plans to bring the eminent people in the arts, sciences and humanities as special guests of the President to the Inaugural. There was a dead silence... So I had to process the whole project... I used the criteria of award winners of some sort, so it wouldn't look as though I was setting up the criteria for what the Democrats felt was eminent or not in the arts, sciences and humanities. Of course, the minute it was suggested to Jack Kennedy, the concept delighted him… There were about 196 on the list… I asked all of them when they came the Inaugural to write in a special book some message for President and Mrs. Kennedy… Weeks after the Inaugural I kept getting messages from the White House, from President Kennedy, asking “Where is that book? I want to see that book.”

     Kay Halle, Oral History Interview February 7, 1967, for the John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

President Kennedy didn’t even wait for his Inaugural Address, not really, to promote the arts in America – although he famously said then, “Together let us …encourage the arts.” By that time, some nine minutes into his presidency, he had already done more for artists and intellectuals than any president in American history – and this he did simply, by telegram. Five weeks before, as President-Elect – encouraged by the glamorous and beguiling Kay Halle, a half-Jewish, half-Irish Catholic department store heiress intimately connected with an astonishing array of powerful men - he invited some 200 of America’s stellar artists, writers, and scientists to attend his Inauguration. Telegrams went out to the likes of George Szell, W.H. Auden, Saul Bellow, Leonard Bernstein, Rudolph Bing, Aaron Copland, Charles Eames, Walter Gropius, Edward Hopper, William Inge, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Linus Pauling, Mark Rothko, Carl Sandburg, Delmore Schwartz, John Steinbeck, Igor Stravinsky, Virgil Thompson, Eudora Welty, E.B. White, Tennessee Williams and, the recipient of this letter, writer and critic Eric Bentley. Bentley, although unable to attend – about half of those invited, did – wrote appreciatively, for a commemorative album of letters to be presented to the President, of the unusual invitation. Kennedy, he said, by inviting to his Inauguration a select group of scholars, artists and writers, instead of the usual hacks and flacks, evidently intended to break with some bad traditions - like, for example, “the bad tradition of philistinism in American political life.” Here the new President, delighted, thanks Bentley for his message:

Miss Kay Halle turned over to me a few days ago two albums filled with letters from the artists and writers who were invited to the Inauguration ceremonies. Mrs. Kennedy and I have had extraordinary pleasure in going through these volumes. We are grateful for the letters, and we shall treasure them for the rest of our lives. I am hopeful that this collaboration between government and the arts will continue and prosper. Mrs. Kennedy and I would be particularly interested in any suggestions you may have in the future about the possible contributions the national government might make to the arts in America. My wife joins me in extending best thanks and regards.

Kennedy was not merely being polite when he wrote of his “extraordinary pleasure” in receiving the volumes. Kay Halle, in her enchanting oral history for the Kennedy Library, recalled how anxious the President was to receive the volumes, and how much he enjoyed them when, finally, she was all but summoned to bring them to the White House. “The President took the book and sat in his chair with such youthful agility,” she recalled. With his feet up on the desk, “he went through every single page reading everything.”

Just a few weeks before his assassination, President Kennedy spoke at commemorative service for the poet Robert Frost, who had so famously read at his Inauguration. “I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft,” Kennedy proclaimed: “An America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment…an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.” Two years later, on the basis of this vision, the National Endowment of the Arts was created.