JFK Show To Begin Today

The John F. Kennedy Library Exhibit opens today in the Museum of Fine Arts. In the eyes of most local residents, Boston was the President's "home," and record crowds are expected.

Already seen by over 750,000 Americans in 13 cities, the touring exhibit centers on Kennedy's famous rocking chair. It rests on a dias, ringed with flags, directly under the high, glass dome of the rotunda in the museum.

The exhibit also includes many of the President's personal effects--his collection of skrimshaw and blackthorn sticks; letters he wrote as a small boy and notes he took during the Cuba missile crisis; his copy of Robert Frost's in a Clearing, inscribed, "I admire you so much I wish I were more of a Democrat than I am."

Kennedy Photographs

Seventy photographs of Kennedy and his family hang on the walls.

Museum Director Perry T. Rathbone has arranged a simultaneous exhibition of paintings by John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer which were on loan to the White House during JFK's occupancy. A rare 15th century Hafner Ware bust, presented to the Museum by a New York collector as a memorial to Kennedy will also be exhibited.

The purpose of the touring exhibit is to raise support for the planned Kennedy Memorial Library and Institute, to be built acoss the Charles River, next to the Business School.

The Exhibit runs through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It is free.