PITTSBURGH — In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Andy Warhol took images of a smiling first lady in a pillbox hat and contrasted them on blue, gold and gray panels to images of her as a stoic widow.

To Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy's image captured the sorrow of a nation. He honored her with hundreds of silkscreen portraits akin to holy cards.

"This, in a sense, suggests for all of his avant-garde direction, he was more of traditionalist," said Tom Sokolowski, director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Warhol's Jackie portraits will be displayed as part of the museum's newest exhibit titled "November 22, 1963: Image, Memory, Myth," which opens Saturday on the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. The show, featuring images of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket and the grainy stills of a home movie shot by Abraham Zapruder capturing the entire assassination, was done in collaboration with The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Warhol, like many of his fellow pop art pioneers, borrowed mainstream images surrounding the assassination and manipulated them for art. Many of Warhol's Jackies were images taken from Life magazine and his Flash series features newswirelike copy.

"It's looking at current events or political events through a different mind-set," said Dawn Quiett, a spokeswoman for The Sixth Floor Museum, which is exhibiting unseen works by Kennedy photographer Jacques Lowe for the anniversary.

Cultural experts and historians say the assassination contributed to America's growing skepticism of the government as conspiracy and cover-ups became linked to major American political events, such as Watergate. But the events of Nov. 22, 1963, are still hotly debated.

Just a few miles away from the museum, forensic pathologists, attorneys and even Sen. Arlen Specter, who served as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, are gathering to discuss the evidence and events surrounding that day at a national symposium hosted by Duquesne University and the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law.

Rather than debate the merits of the "magic bullet theory," however, the Warhol Museum exhibit considers the role of media in shaping America's memory of that day and the artists who interpreted it.

Jackie Kennedy's image was assigned more weight than other images, in part because of Warhol's work, said Art Simon, a film professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey and author of "Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK assassination in Art and Film."