Beginning tomorrow, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. will honor former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham with a one-room exhibit dedicated to her life and works. The centerpiece of the show, “One Life: Katharine Graham,” is a portrait by photographer Richard Avedon featuring Ms. Graham. In it, she stares at the viewer with a look that makes you want to impress her.
The exhibit actually sounds fairly comprehensive for being contained to just one room. Also on display: a handwritten page from her memoir, the mask she wore to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball (seen here), and an antique laundry wringer presented to her by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — a reference to a rather unbecoming remark made about Ms. Graham by the attorney general during the Deepthroat saga.
Sounds like a blast! Let’s just hope that, with the paper’s hazy future, it’s not too elegiac.
“One Life: Katharine Graham” runs in Washington D.C. through May 3, 2011.
