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Rejected portrait of LBJ draws record crowd to Snyder museum
On this day in 1967, a record number of visitors went to the Diamond M
Museum in Snyder, Texas, to see Peter Hurd's official portrait of
President Lyndon B. Johnson, which Johnson had rejected and declared
"the ugliest thing I ever saw." Hurd, a native of New Mexico born in
1904, studied under N. C. Wyeth in the 1920s and first came to national
attention in the 1930s. Many of his paintings and murals are in Texas;
perhaps the most notable mural is in the Museum of Texas Tech
University, Lubbock. The Johnson portrait episode inspired the punning
comment that "artists should be seen around the White House--but not
Hurd." The Diamond M Museum put the portrait on display just before it
was moved to the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in
Washington, D.C., where it hangs today. The Diamond M Museum closed in
1992, and its collection was given to the Museum of Texas Tech
University.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- DIAMOND M MUSEUM
- HURD, PETER
- JOHNSON, LYNDON BAINES
- MUSEUM OF TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY
- MUSEUMS
- Links to other Web sites (will be opened in new browser window)
- National Portrait Gallery Hall of Presidents
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Falvel given command of Flash (1836)
- Galveston longshoremen strike (1920)
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