Exhibits

To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Dates: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - Thursday, January 1, 2015

Location: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA

For two weeks in fall 1962, with the leaders of the two superpowers locked in a standoff, the world teetered on the brink of thermonuclear war. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had secretly deployed a nuclear strike force in Cuba, just 90 miles from the United States. When President John F. Kennedy insisted the missiles be removed, Krushchev refused.

Presenting original documents and artifacts from the episode, as well as transcripts from secretly recorded White House tapes, “To the Brink” is a look back at the Cuban Missile Crisis 50 years after Kennedy and Krushchev looked into the abyss of a nuclear catastrophe, and then stepped back.

Explore the exhibit through the app and microsite.

“To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” which debuted in the National Archives Museum’s Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery in Washington, DC, was made possible in part by the Foundation for the National Archives, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and the generous support of Lead Sponsor AT&T, with special recognition to the Lawrence F. O’Brien family.