On January 8, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline viewed Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa for the first time in person. What was extraordinary about this visit was that they didn’t have to cross an ocean to do it; instead they just had to go down the street to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. For the first time since it was painted over four and a half centuries earlier, the Mona Lisa had left the European continent for a brief seven week tour of North America. The beguiling first lady had overcome the odds and convinced the French to release their most jealously guarded artifact, one that was purchased from the artist by a French king himself and once hung in Napoleon’s bedroom, to American museums for this brief tour.
The painting was afforded safer travel accommodations than the first lady herself would have received had she made the trip. Aboard its ocean liner, the artwork sat inside a custom-built case that would float in the event of the ship sinking, while the case was housed in a climate controlled room to ensure no warping or other environmental disturbances. Once it reached America, the precious cargo was met by armed guards to escort it through the throng of reporters, all there to watch a closed box emerge from a ship and head directly for a truck.
It was all worth it, however, when the tour was a smashing success. A grand reveal was organized at the National Gallery with the President making remarks flanked by the French minister of culture and his wife. Over 2,000 of Washington D.C.’s elite gathered in resplendent formalwear to get a first glimpse of Da Vinci’s masterpiece, a number dwarfed by the over 1.6 million who would wait in lines and travel the country to lay their eyes on the vaunted work. And in less than two months, it was over. The painting was re-crated and sent back to France, where it has sat, save for a short trip to Japan, behind a thick sheath of bulletproof glass in the Louvre. Many Americans who would never get the chance or couldn’t spare the expense of a trip across the pond got to see, with their own eyes, the most famous painting in the world.