A President's Beloved is one of fifteen paintings by Robert Indiana that takes the actress Marilyn Monroe as its subject. The painting alludes to the alleged affair between President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe had famously sung "Happy Birthday" to the President at a fundraiser and early birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962. In 1997, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh promised to publish proof of the affair in his book The Dark Side of Camelot, only to realize that the cache of secret Kennedy documents he had uncovered and relied on in writing the book were fakes.
