Designing Camelot Book Signing

Visit the White House Historical Association to meet the authors! James Archer Abbott and Elaine Rice Bachmann will be signing their new release Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy on Wednesday, July 28, 1:00–3:00 p.m. Free and open to the public.

On February 23, 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy launched the most historic and celebrated redesign of the White House in its history. The White House announced Mrs. Kennedy’s plan to locate and acquire the finest period furniture, with which the historical integrity of the Executive Mansion’s interiors would be restored. Thanks to the vision of the young first lady, who was determined to make her new home the most perfect house in the United States, a committee was formed, a law was passed, donations were sought, a nonprofit partner was chartered, and an inalienable museum-quality collection that would belong to the nation was born. An illustrated chronicle of the restoration, this volume celebrates the sixty-year legacy of one of the most influential interior design projects in American history. First-person reflections, personal and public correspondence, media accounts, and photographs are included with detailed room-by-room analyses of the restoration, anecdotes about the people involved, and insights into the decisions made by Mrs. Kennedy in transforming the house into the national treasure we know today.

Mrs. Kennedy’s extraordinary and transformational vision for the White House, so masterfully executed in barely one thousand days, is preserved in the fabric of the historic interiors and through the work that has been carried on by the White House Historical Association, the private nonprofit partner she founded sixty years ago. — Stewart D. McLaurin, President, White House Historical Association

My mother shared my father’s belief that American civilization had come of age, and she was eager to show the very best of our art and culture to the world. So she transformed the White House into one of the nation’s most important museums of American art, decorative arts, and history, and created a stage for the greatest performing artists of the day. — Caroline Kennedy