MEDORA, N.D. — David Hume Kennerly, who has photographed every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson, will be in the Badlands today for the opening of In the Room: Sixty Years on the Front Lines of History, the first special exhibition at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
There will be a private opening reception, with remarks by Kennerly on Thursday, Oct. 1. Doors open 5:30 p.m. MT; program begins 6 p.m. MT in the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Microsoft Gallery, 3410 Chateau Rd., Medora, N.D.
Also, Oct. 2–3, including Kennerly’s artist talk (Friday, 1 p.m. MT), a Kennerly-led gallery tour (Friday, 4 p.m. MT), and a Saturday artist panel with Kennerly, wet-plate photographer Shane Balkowitsch, and Chad Ziemendorf, who documented the Library’s construction.
Kennerly won the Pulitzer Prize at 25 for his coverage of the Vietnam War and became chief White House photographer for President Gerald R. Ford at 27. He was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was shot and photographed the morning the Pentagon burned. The exhibition of photographs draws on his new book of the same name and hangs in a building named for the president who was among the first to grasp what a photograph could do.
The dates of the exhibition will be Oct. 2 – Nov. 30, 2026. Included with general admission; exhibition-only admission is $10. The exhibition is sponsored by Bank of America. For the full schedule, visit trlibrary.com/dhk-opening-weekend