Type: Public event

The President and the Cartoonist: Ford's Presidency Through the Cartoons of Pat Oliphant

Date & time

Sep 9-14, 2024, All Day

Location

Rebecca M. Blank Great Hall
735 South State Street

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library is presenting a wide-ranging exhibition looking at the Ford Presidency through the lens of editorial cartoons of Pat Oliphant. 

The National Archives and Records Administration, which manages the Library, has generously provided four Oliphant panels. 

Oliphant was a regular visitor to Ann Arbor, meeting with Knight-Wallace Journalism fellows for many years. Wallace House for Journalists has loaned four of the caricatures that he drew on some of those visits.   

Here is how NARA describes the exhibit:

"On the 50th anniversary of Gerald R. Ford’s Presidency, this exhibit examines how Ford rose to the challenge of the office by exploring some of the difficult decisions that defined his administration and shaped his legacy, including granting clemency to draft dodgers, pardoning Richard Nixon, providing aid for Vietnamese refugees, responding to the Mayaguez crisis, managing Cold War relations with the Soviet Union, and refusing to bail out New York City.

Explore the public perception of Ford's difficult decisions through the cartoons of Pat Oliphant, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist whose career spanned sixty years, covering the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson through Barack Obama. As the cartoons illustrate, although Ford’s decisions were not met with universal approval during his Presidency, Ford himself remained steadfast in his goals to heal the public trust, tattered in the wake of Watergate, and build a stronger nation."

The exhibit at the Ford School will be on display September 9-14. The exhibit at the Ford Library, located on North Campus, will run throughout the autumn.