For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) Style and Culture: Where Science Meets Fashion Anthropologists have long studied “other people,” cultures far removed from us in time or space; many people believe this is all they do. But the anthropologist’s role is also to help us see ourselves—to examine how and why we have created the cultures we now call our own, and to explore how we, too, fit into the broad canvas of humankind. It’s an interesting perspective from which to view Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years – Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, says Alaka Wali, Ph.D., curator and director of The Field Museum’s Center for Cultural Understanding and Change. From an anthropological perspective, the exhibition is not merely a chance to get a close-up view of “celebrity clothes,” but an opportunity to consider the complex interactions of the individual and society. Shaping and Reflecting “The early 1960s saw the beginning of an important cultural shift in America,” Wali reminds us. “Just think of the Civil Rights movement, the student rebellions, Elvis Presley, the sexual revolution.” America in the ’60s was also expanding its vision as the leader of the free world, testing its new role in Latin America, in Europe, and in space. Both culturally and intellectually, people were freeing themselves from the old mores. The Kennedys were very much a part of this shift—shaping it and being shaped by it. Jacqueline Kennedy, says Wali, helped create an avenue through which changes at the highest levels of society—especially the new internationalism and America’s growing sophistication—would become more mainstream. “That’s why we’re so interested in her clothing,” Wali explains. “Jacqueline Kennedy paid great attention to material culture, and these dresses are laden with symbolic meaning.” For her first official trip to Europe, the first lady chose fabrics and styles that said to the world: Look, Americans have come of age—we’re cultured, sophisticated, international. “Everything she wore was ‘on message,’ supporting the president’s political vision,” Wali says. “Her clothing shows how she created a representation of America in the way she dressed.” The exhibition, Wali adds, is also a wonderful opportunity to examine the interface of the individual and society, and to understand how an individual working within the rules that govern society can create cultural change. “Much of how we dress is dictated by the norms of our culture,” Wali says. “But here you have a single, extraordinary individual who changed the style for an entire country. She couldn’t be a Hillary Clinton—the times weren’t right for her to have that kind of activist role in the political realm. So she did it in the space she found available to her.” Continue