ShareThisWASHINGTON - Larger than life, Ronald Reagan walks straight toward the camera, a smile stretching across his face, his right hand waving to someone just out of view.
An unknown photographer captured the image in 1988 as Reagan was heading back to the White House after an awards ceremony on the South Lawn.
But to visitors entering the National Portrait Gallery's new exhibit on the 40th president's life and political career, the image takes on a whole other dimension. It's as if Reagan himself is there to greet you at the door and invite you to come on in.
"It's really fascinating to see glimpses of his life and that period of our history," said Leslie Kinney of Guilford, Vt., pausing for a few seconds to reflect on Reagan's legacy during a recent visit to the museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution.
The exhibit, called "One Life: Ronald Reagan," opened July 1 and is one of the many events that have taken place across the world over the past year to mark the centennial of the former president's birth. Reagan would have turned 100 last February.
Virtually every chapter of Reagan's life is chronicled, starting with his childhood in Illinois and then moving on to his careers as radio announcer, Hollywood star and, eventually, his emergence as the masterful politician who would go on to become California governor and president of the United States.
"I tried to cover as much of his life as possible," said the exhibit's curator, Sidney Hart, who is also the Portrait Gallery's senior historian.
"As (biographer) Edmund Morris has pointed out, the man had six successful careers," Hart said. "I tried to cover those to give that scope to the exhibit. It does, however, focus on the presidency, and it does so because that is what Reagan's national significance arises from -- his presidency."
Many of the most memorable moments from Reagan's years in the White House are represented in the collection.
A photo from 1983 shows Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O'Neill seated in front of a fireplace in the Oval Office during an animated discussion on the federal budget. Each man is pointing a finger at the other.
Another photo from 1986 captures Reagan and then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland. Reagan characterized that day as the angriest of his presidency, and in the photo, frustration is etched across both men's faces as the opportunity to reach a historic reduction in nuclear arms seems to be slipping away.
An oil painting of Reagan that made the cover of Time when the magazine named him Man of the Year in 1980 is included in the collection. So is Andy Warhol's 1985 portrait of Reagan, which used an Arrow shirt ad to make a statement about Reagan's resilience. Like a shirt that won't wrinkle, Reagan was the "Teflon President" to whom no criticism would stick.
The exhibit includes family photos from Reagan's youth and movie posters from his Hollywood career. Also on display are the Marine Band harmonica he taught himself to play while recuperating from an assassination attempt in 1981; a bronze sculpture of Reagan as a cowboy; and a sheet of sketches from Reagan's own hand, one of which is a self-portrait.
"Reagan was an incessant doodler," Hart said.
Putting together the exhibit was fairly easy, Hart said, because the gallery owns more than 70 images of Reagan, including the Warhol portrait and the original artwork used for numerous Time magazine covers.
That gave Hart a lot to work with, and he filled in the blanks by going to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California, which allowed him to make enlargements from some photos in its vast collection.
The exhibit will be open through May 2012.
(Email reporter Michael Collins at collinsm(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
