The National Heritage Lecture, Transitions and Traditions in the President’s House, will be given by former White House curator Betty C. Monkman on Wednesday, November 14, at 6:00 p.m. at the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and Naval Heritage Center, 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.
Transitions and Traditions in the President’s House
As the nation prepares for the 2008 election, this lecture will explore many historical transitions experienced by presidents and their families during the past 200 years. The expansion of the presidential offices, as well as changes in living and working spaces, will be examined. Forms of entertaining and the impact of evolving technologies will be discussed in relation to traditions that live on and enhance the history of the President’s House.
Betty C. Monkman served more than thirty years in the Office of the Curator, the White House, retiring as Chief Curator in 2002. She is the author of The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families and Treasures of the White House, and she is a frequent contributor to White House History. She most recently authored the revised edition of The Living White House. Originally published in 1966, this new twelfth edition is a celebration of the book’s fifth decade in print. Ms. Monkman updated and expanded the text and selected two hundred historic and contemporary images to illustrate more than two centuries of official and private life in the place she refers to as “The President’s House: The Nation’s House.”
The National Heritage Lecture series was established in 1991 by the White House Historical Association, the United States Capitol Historical Society and the Supreme Court Historical Society to enhance knowledge and appreciation of the American system of government and the principles on which it was founded. Each lecture relates to one of the three branches of government and explores the historic and momentous events associated with its history.
The White House Historical Association is the host of the 2007 National Heritage Lecture. The three historical societies co-sponsoring the lecture are private, non-partisan, not-for-profit organizations dedicated to research and publications centering on the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government.
