Exhibition hits at pool, politics and great writing at the LBJ Ranch
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Classic LBJ multitasking, reading papers and caring for the family dog, Yuki, while lounging in the pool at the LBJ Ranch with his grandson, Patrick Lyndon Nugent, in 1968. Photo: Corbis via Getty Images
"History and Fate," a temporary exhibition in Austin about the work of the late Richard Goodwin, speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, illuminates how great speeches are drafted.
Why it matters: With original documents from Goodwin — the husband of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin — the exhibit at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas provides a view into the inner workings of power and politics.
The intrigue: The exhibit includes photos of Goodwin drafting speeches at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, about 60 miles west of Austin — and includes an account of his skinny dipping with the president in the ranch pool.
- LBJ was famously un-shy about meeting with aides and reporters in the nude.
What they're saying: "Dick entertained dinner guests for years with that story of this presidential skinny dip," Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in the exhibit material.
- "Indeed, the conversation in the pool that day is widely regarded as the signal event to which we can trace ... the advent of the most progressive legislation of the last three quarters of a century."
📍 If you go: The exhibition, free and open to the public, runs through July 25.