Boston, MA
Opened October 1993

The design of the museum’s new generation of exhibits provides an upbeat and lively experience that reflects the spirit President Kennedy brought to his life and work, a spirit he shared with his fellow Americans and with the world.

The design approach is heavily environmental, creating an immersion experience. The museum experience begins with a documentary film in which JFK talks about his early life and his political career leading up to the nomination for the presidency. Visitors then travel with him along the campaign trail – a street of storefronts, campaign headquarters, the studio from which the first televised presidential debate was broadcast and an election night newsroom. In each setting, JFK is seen on television as he was by the electorate in 1960. His charisma, wit and intelligence comes through now just as it did then.

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The second half of the museum creates another environmental setting – the White House – in which to explore the issues at the heart of the Kennedy presidency. Visitors enter briefing rooms, the Oval Office, a family room and other themed spaces including a 60-seat Situation Room theater in which they witness the playing out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of the video programs through which visitors come to know President Kennedy, his family and his contemporaries use period footage and news coverage to keep viewers fully immersed in the time period. No present-day interpreters or fictional narrators break the fantasy of being in another time and place.