>> These gifts kind of got out of control.

I mean the White House requested a ban on sending pets, because a lot of people sent pets, sometimes through the mail.

(laughs) >> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, the Kennedy White House, through the eyes of its children.

>> More people than ever are wearing denim.

>> BOWEN: Then nothing comes between us and a new documentary on jeans and their hold over fashion and pop culture.

>> I think denim is a canvas which people can project on to.

>> BOWEN: Then, how artist Titus Kaphar brings his vision to revisionist history.

>> When people say that I'm erasing history, they're pointing to the fact that they don't recognize that I'm actually uncovering what was already there.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, when John F. Kennedy became president, it was the first time in decades the American public had seen a young family in the White House.

And they loved it.

It was endearing, but it was also a source of great frustration for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

It's all a story now told in a new exhibition at the JFK Library and Museum.

>> I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination.

>> BOWEN: In the early 1960s, when global tensions were boiling over, and the president found himself on the precipice of nuclear war, there was always hope in the White House, emanating directly from its youngest and most cherubic residents.

>> To see the children, it's humanizing of the presidency and the administration.

It reassures people that we are all human beings, that our children matter in the end.

>> BOWEN: That, according to JFK Library and Museum director Alan Price, is one of myriad reasons the Kennedy White House captivated the American public.

What's been most striking to you seeing this collection of images of the children?

>> Well, it's just so exciting to bring out a piece of our collection that we don't ordinarily get to bring out.

>> BOWEN: In its newest exhibition, the library and museum has focused on the First Children.

Caroline Kennedy was three when her father took office, and John Jr. was all of two months, a perfect complement to their parents' own youthful allure.

>> America was obsessed with them.

You've got to remember long before Instagram and TikTok, there were magazines, and America loved to have magazines in their home.

And these children were on the covers.

>> BOWEN: Because, says curator Janice Hodson, a sizable portion of the American public suddenly had a White House to which they could connect.

>> 40 percent of the eligible voters were people under 40.

These people were World War II veterans, as was President Kennedy.

They had young families, so they closely identified with the Kennedy family.

>> BOWEN: They flooded the White House with gifts-- rocking chairs from a shop in North Carolina; sparkling piggy banks from California makers; dolls from world leaders.

>> These gifts kind of got out of control.

I mean, there was a... the White House requested a ban on sending pets, because a lot of people sent pets, sometimes through the mail.

(laughs) >> BOWEN: Then came the commercialization of the children-- paper dolls and comic books.

And something that earned the indignation of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, comic Vaughn Meader's Grammy-winning parody of the family.

>> I should like to ask a question about... >> Would you identify yourself, please?

>> I'm your wife.

(audience laughter) >> It's very mild, you know, by today's standards, but for the time, you know, it was considered going a step too far.

>> BOWEN: The public's appetite for all things Kennedy grew so voracious, Jackie Kennedy began to shut it down, heeding Eleanor Roosevelt's personal warning that life inside the quote-unquote "fish bowl" could be difficult.

So Kennedy allowed the release only of basic information, like the children's heights, but not much more.

>> At one point, she says to Pierre Salinger, the president's press secretary, "No more information.

"If the media asks, you know, "'What do they want for their birthdays?

"What do they want for Christmas?'

"Tell them Mrs. Kennedy does not want to give out that information."

>> BOWEN: She defied even more public sentiment when she assembled a school within the White House for Caroline and the children of staff members.

As the battle for civil rights and desegregation raged across the country, Jackie Kennedy settled the matter, at least on Pennsylvania Avenue.

>> The White House school did integrate.

And that child was Avery Hatcher, who was the son of Andrew Hatcher, assistant press secretary, who was the highest-ranking African American in the Kennedy cabinet.

A lot of the children draw President Kennedy as they kind of knew him, as a family friend.

So it's President Kennedy walking to the pool for a swim.

Or Avery Hatcher shows a press conference and his father is like a stick figure next to the lectern.

>> BOWEN: As challenging as life in the White House could be, it also provided routine and togetherness-- a place where the president could always finger-paint with his son, and have breakfast with his daughter.

>> Jacqueline Kennedy did state, you know, after, after the assassination, that this was a point in their lives when she felt they were very close, because they were all together in the same place as a family.

And she kind of reflected on these as being some of their best years.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> More people than ever are wearing denim.

You'd have to look far and wide to find an American of any age who has never worn blue jeans.

>> BOWEN: That's from Riveted: The History of Jeans, a new documentary airing on the PBS program American Experience.

The film does a deep dive into denim, examining its perfect fit for certain social movements and its lesser-known history.

Here's a closer look.

>> During the 1950s, denim becomes increasingly associated with biker gangs and juvenile delinquency.

There is a sort of fear, I think, among adults that if teenagers put on a pair of jeans, they were automatically gonna become delinquents.

>> BOWEN: Michael Bicks, Anna Lee Strachan, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you for having us.

>> BOWEN: Well, I'll start with you, Michael, the myth of denim, who knew that there was such a nuanced history here?

So tell us what you're exploring.

>> Well, I mean, what we're looking into is really the hidden history of denim.

I mean, everybody thinks it's Levi Strauss, you know, the gold rush, stuff like that.

And it turns out that it's much, much more, that, I mean, it goes back a long way, at least to Dunagiri, India, and then has an amazingly sort of twisted history that not only tells you a lot about the fabric, but tells you a lot about our country.

>> BOWEN: Well, and I think so many people just think, assume, that jeans, denim, it's a very American thing.

Is it a very American thing?

>> It's not as American as we think, you know?

The fabric, the dye, you know, the cotton, all the origins of the actual textile, and the pants themselves.

>> But having said that, it has come to represent America to the world.

>> BOWEN: So if it didn't necessarily start here, and this is a history that you excavate very fascinatingly, tell us, you know, where denim begins to surface and, well, I guess maybe we should start with the color of denim, this indigo that we're all wearing.

>> Well, what we learned is the history of blue and indigo itself goes way back.

>> Centuries ago, indigo was said to be worth its weight in gold.

Competition for it was so fierce, Europeans actually called it the devil's dye.

♪ ♪ >> Indigo is, in fact, a weed.

The process of turning indigo from this small green leaf into a dye is a very delicate process.

>> Indigo has a very long history, it doesn't come to be, you know, in pants and in, in fabrics that we would recognize as denim until maybe about the 19th century, when cotton was able to be milled en masse, first in Europe, and then in the United States.

>> It didn't become denim until at least a hundred years into the fabric.

I mean, it started as probably as near as anybody can tell, as dungaree in India, was sort of this coarse work fabric.

And then in Italy, it was manufactured into very...

I mean, sails, clothes for sailors, allegedly Christopher Columbus's father tailored, you know, jean fabric, and so Genoa is where "jean" comes from.

And then that makes its way to de Nimes, France, where it becomes denim.

So it's, you know... and then denim makes its way to the United States, probably about, you know, once like, the mills pick up in New Hampshire and all over the place, and starts to be just mass produced.

>> BOWEN: To go back to the indigo for a moment, what, what level of appropriation happened there as this was being carried from Africa?

>> What we found out, and there's a really great anecdote here that we present in the film, the story of Eliza Lucas, who's known as this great entrepreneur in South Carolina who kind of got the indigo industry started in Colonial America.

>> Eliza Lucas was the daughter of a colonial governor.

She had studied botany, and when Eliza was a teenager, her father bought her, among many other plants, indigo.

>> Once Eliza gets her hands on the indigo seeds, it takes off in terms of production.

>> What's not in the history books is the knowledge that was, you know, taken from the West African slaves on her plantation.

So it's known that in West Africa, there are many, many cultures that have a very long and deep history of knowing how to work indigo.

The plant, manufacturing the dye, and actually getting the dye into clothing, which is a very arduous and, like, difficult process.

>> BOWEN: Among the commonly held beliefs, this all starts with Levi Strauss, too.

"We didn't have jeans in the world until Levi Strauss came along."

Another myth busted by you both.

>> (chuckles) >> Yes.

I mean, we didn't have rivets until Jacob Davis went to Levi Strauss and said, "I have this idea."

I mean... >> BOWEN: Let me just say, I have always wondered, and I don't know how I get this far in life without wondering realizing what these little metal pieces in my jeans or my pants are, but they're rivets.

>> They're rivets, and denim was worn as workwear.

I mean, it clothed the enslaved.

I mean, it was worn as workwear sort of throughout the 19th century, but it fell, it kept falling apart.

And this guy, Jacob Davis, who was a tailor in Reno, Nevada.

Like, one day this woman walks in and said, "I need a pair of pants for my husband."

>> So this lady approached Jacob Davis and she said, "I have a portly husband who continues to rip his work pants, and I'd like you to construct a sturdy pair for him."

So he thought, "Well, I have all these washer and post rivets that people put on these saddles-- let's add them to all these places he keep ripping his pants.

>> And suddenly it was a big deal in Reno where, you know, people like, "Hey, Mr. Davis, we want some of those pants."

And the pants took off.

>> BOWEN: When do we begin to trace it to fashion?

>> Well, it sort of depends on your definition of fashion.

(chuckling) Michael and I have had this discussion many times.

I think fashion as we tend to think of it today, probably not until the '70s.

But the story we tell in the film is we back that way up, until maybe the '20s and '30s, when this phenomenon of the dude ranch kind of came about.

You had, you know, the Great Depression, folks out west were looking at ways to try to keep making money.

And they turned to turning their ranches into places where wealthy easterners could come and play cowboy, have some fun.

And the women that went out there experimented with men's clothing and the roles that were traditionally done by cowboys, cowhands on the ranches.

>> This was one of the first times that women felt comfortable enough to say, "Hey, you know what?

I enjoy wearing that kind of clothing, I'm gonna do it."

So, the American blue jeans manufacturers realized that there was a substantial market to be conquered by creating blue jeans lines for women.

>> Suddenly, ladies Levi's from the dude ranch were featured in Vogue, and that's the first time you sort of see them in a high fashion magazine.

>> BOWEN: Well, what I was so fascinated, and probably most struck by in your film is to understand how closely, how intimately associated with the social movements in this country denim is, and it just swings from one, to the next, to the next.

How does this come to be?

>> You know, it's interesting, I mean, I think denim is a canvas which people can project onto.

In the '50s, it becomes sort of this thing for teenagers.

And, you know, I mean, part of it is because, you know, they saw, like, Marlon Brando wearing them in The Wild One, and they thought, "If I'm going to be a rebel, I'm going to wear them."

>> (whistling) >> In the civil rights movement, they became sort of for Black college students from the north, or going down south, to help organize, they became a symbol of solidarity with, you know, the working class who were wearing them.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they're just, I mean, you look a pair of jeans, they're pretty plain, you know, I mean, there really isn't that much to them.

So you can project a lot on to them.

>> BOWEN: So where do jeans and denim, where do they sit today?

I think this is an interesting, interesting moment to ask that question with the pandemic, and we know that everybody's gone to their, their soft clothing, is they talk about it.

Nobody wants hard waists anymore.

So is this a tough moment for denim?

>> (laughing): That's, I think that's a great question.

There's been a lot of press you've probably seen about like, you know, "Is this final time denim is going to die?"

Because athleisure has just always been going up for many years now.

Sweatpants and, I don't know, you know, folks we talk to think, nope, it's still going to be around, just multiple different silhouettes now... >> And... >> It's not just one shape that everyone kind of goes to.

>> It's one of our interviews, it's like the cockroach of fashion.

You cannot kill it.

(laughter) >> BOWEN: It's such a-- it's a very fascinating documentary.

Thank you both for being with us.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Boston's Emerald Necklace is aglow once again.

We have all you'll want to see in Arts This Week.

Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye, comes to life this opening weekend courtesy the Huntington Theatre Company.

See it Sunday.

On Monday, experience the sights and sounds of "Kerry Tribe: Onomatopoeia" at Emerson Contemporary gallery.

It's the Boston native rooting around in memory, consciousness, and the limits of communication.

Bridge the gap between our green spaces Tuesday as Lights in the Necklace returns.

Find trees and bridges in the Emerald Necklace aglow in green.

Thursday, catch a movie with the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 LIVE as their Bubble Gum Tour comes to the Hanover Theatre.

Watch as local poets debut work inspired by pieces in the Cape Ann Museum Friday.

The After Hours Art event streams on the museum's Facebook page.

Next, artist Titus Kaphar deconstructs the narratives that have long been portrayed in art.

By ripping canvases out of their frames, tearing paintings of our Founding Fathers to shreds, and literally whitewashing classic portraiture, he interrogates a history of racism, suppression, and discrimination.

(bell chimes) >> When I say shifting the gaze, I'm imploring the viewer to set what feels natural aside for a moment and try a different route through the work, and when you do that through a painting, even a familiar painting, you might find something you never expected to find.

Composition.

There are techniques and strategies for guiding the gaze through a particular composition.

I've spent a lot of time studying them, artists spend a lot of time studying them.

They work.

I'm shifting it from the strategy of the original artist's pathway through the work and trying to find some other way to see, not giving in to what will feel most natural.

What I've been doing is actually trying to separate those Black characters from the other characters in the paintings who were oppressing them, to give the viewer the opportunity to contemplate these characters on their own terms, on their own merit, without the pressures of this oppression that exists within the compositional structure of the painting itself.

I taught myself how to paint by going to museums and looking at images like this.

There is a reason he is the highest in the composition here.

(paintbrush scraping) There is a reason why the painter is showing us this gold necklace here.

He's trying to tell us something about the economic status of these people in these paintings.

Painting is a visual language where everything in the painting is meaningful, is important, it's coded, but sometimes because of the compositional structure, because of compositional hierarchy, it's hard to see other things.

(paintbrush scraping) There's more written about dogs in our history than there are about this other character here.

About his dreams, about his hopes, about what he wanted out of life.

I don't want you to think that this is about eradication.

It's not.

The oil that you saw me just put inside of this paint is linseed oil.

It becomes transparent over time.

So eventually what's gonna happen is these faces will emerge a little bit.

What I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to show you, is how to shift your gaze.

(voiceover): When people say that I'm erasing history, they're pointing to the fact that they don't recognize that I'm actually uncovering what was already there.

I'm attempting to make you look at a different part of the painting, not erasing history.

That takes a kind of structural, institutional power that I actually don't have.

We can look at institutional, structural power and we can look and see the ways in which history has been erased.

It hasn't been erased by some random Black dude in Connecticut making paintings and putting white paint on it.

That ain't how it works.

I didn't grow up going to museums.

My mother worked really, really hard.

My mother had me when she was very young, she was 15 years old, she worked three jobs usually just to make sure we were taken care of.

I found art very late in my life.

I was 27 by the time I realized that this was really what I wanna do, so I take my kids to the museum every time I have a chance, whether they like it or not.

We were in New York City, and we were going to the Natural History Museum in New York, and as we were walking up the stairs, we came upon the Teddy Roosevelt sculpture that's out in front of the Natural History Museum.

And Teddy Roosevelt is sitting on the horse looking really strong, boldly holding that horse with one arm, and one side of him is an African American man, and on the left side of him is a Native American man.

And as we were walking up those stairs, my oldest son, Savion, he said, "Dad, how come he gets to ride and they have to walk?"

And it was one of those moments where you, as a parent, realize this is gonna take way longer than we really have... (chuckles) but you can't pass up those kinds of teachable moments.

And so we sat on the stairs for a little bit and we talked about it.

And in my house, history is a really important thing, it's alive, and we try to help our kids understand that understanding the past is about understanding the present.

♪ ♪ That painting, "Behind the Myths of Benevolence," is about the dichotomy of this country itself, of our country itself.

You have the individual who probably wrote more eloquently about liberty than anyone to ever walk.

Thomas Jefferson, right?

And you have that same individual who values liberty more than life itself withholding liberty from hundreds of people who make his very life possible.

The character in that painting, the woman in that painting, is at once "Sally Mae Hemings," in quotations, and at once a stand-in for all of the other Black women who were on that plantation.

There are over 300 other enslaved people on that plantation.

At least 50% of them are women.

And so it's easy for us to focus on that one part of the story and forget that there were other women who were abused in so many different ways.

In that painting, it's a literal pulling back the curtain to, again, shift our gaze.

We can't just simply demonize our founding fathers, but it's also important not to deify them.

Let's just find the truth in the middle.

"The Forgotten Soldier."

I've been working with this concept for a little while now.

It came as a sort of fascination of the process of making sculpture.

In this particular work, I decided that I wanted the mold to be the finished work.

That is, I wanted you to be able to look, in this case, at George Washington, one of our founding fathers, in his absence-- his complete, his perfect absence.

But in his perfect absence is, as I said, the pure potential for all of the good things, but the reality of the bad things as well.

In front of that is this figure, this soldier on one knee, prepared for battle, in profile.

The Black figure in the front is about those forgotten soldiers, the ones that were there, that participated, that, for some reason, history forgot.

(rifle firing) Let's be honest, it's not for some reason.

It doesn't work with the narrative that slavery makes sense, slavery is good for the nation, Black people like to be enslaved.

So we write out those kinds of histories, we just ignore them because they challenge other aspects of what we believe.

My intention is that we see both of these characters at the same time, that there is a visual dialogue between the character who sits in front, this Black soldier, and George Washington.

We have this tendency to kind of write our history thinking about those people sitting on that horse, but there is a lot of other characters, those soldiers on the ground, that actually give their lives for the battle.

In this particular exhibition, we're talking about the Black soldiers who were by and large forgotten to history, erased from history.

In putting them together, I'm trying to say, "Let's not prioritize either part of the conversation "over the other, let's have both of the conversations at once."

(bell chimes) (bells chiming) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, we look back at a moment in the 1980s when artists banded together as activists across North America to condemn U.S. intervention in Central America.

>> Artists were incredibly active in the anti-war movements and so they were sort of calling those movements in and sort of bringing them along into this new phase of, you know, what should be a kind of collective understanding and struggle.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Plus a music group that wants to make concerts available for home delivery.

As in musicians, instruments, everything, live in your living room.

>> Being close to the audience is really captivating, because it's like the energy that, that we put out as musicians, it's almost like they can sort of feel that, too.

>> BOWEN: As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

Before we leave you, we take a look at the artwork of longtime Roxbury resident Napoleon Jones-Henderson.

In 1987, he created a pair of doors for the Roxbury Community College Library.

They're enamel on copper, and depict the struggle of the community to get the college built.

But, overarching, are themes of rhythm and hope.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for joining us.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪