In 2022, I saw the decorated Americana singer John Doe at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The show was free, part of the Millennium Stage series that allows smaller acts to claim space at the renowned performing arts center. Doe joked that he was almost in the Kennedy Center, really just playing in the hallway.
With the hallway’s enormous glass curtain wall facing onto the Potomac River, and acres of opulent red carpet leading to the performance spaces, the Kennedy Center embodies a style of design at once sophisticated and down to earth.
John Doe put on a great show, illustrating how the Center fulfills its mission to celebrate the American performing arts in all its guises – from the well-known Kennedy Center Honors, opera and classical music, all the way to a punk rocker turned folk musician.
Recent news that the Kennedy Center is blocked off with construction barriers and threatened with apparent demolition by the Trump administration is devastating– not only to the community in Washington, D.C., but to all Americans with a musician, dancer, singer, or artist in their lives.
While members of the President Donald Trump-appointed board insist that it is outdated, it is in fact an irreplaceable symbol of American creativity and a fulfillment of the promise of public support for the arts. Champions of historic preservation and patrons of the Center have rallied, protested and continue to fight for its preservation.
The Kennedy Center Is a living memorial to the President John F. Kennedy, killed by an assassin in Dallas, Texas in 1963. While the center had been planned since 1958, after Kennedy’s death President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation to name the center in his honor.
At the signing on the banks of the Potomac in 1964, Johnson called the future center “a symbol and a reflection and a hope” and celebrated a new era of support for the arts.
A living memorial celebrates the life and ideas of individuals through activities and gatherings. Soldier Field in Chicago is a living memorial, dedicated on Armistice Day in 1925 to soldiers who had lost their lives in World War I. The memorial is not just the stadium itself, but its continued use and activation when thousands of people gather.
The Kennedy Center also depends on this union of architecture and joyous gathering. Designed by a team led by the architect Edward Durrell Stone, known for jet-setting chicmid-century modern design and interiors, the Center embodies what the historian Alice T. Friedman has described as a period of American glamour, when the U.S. came into its own as a cultural leader after World War 2.
The Center’s slender golden pillars and glowing white marble reinvent the staid classicism of Washington, DC for the modern age. Quotations by Kennedy adorn the exterior: “I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.”
The building opened in 1971, and when buildings hit 50 years old, just like when people hit 50, they tend to develop the aches and pains of middle age. For a person it might be a little arthritis – for a building it might be a need for updated wiring or repairing a roof.
The Kennedy Center has been deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and it is a public building. That means there are policies in place to make sure that any alterations must undergo thorough review. The National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act apply. It is crucial to uphold those policies.
Attempts to circumvent project review, denying public input, are antithetical to democracy. News that forklifts on site may already be damaging the building seems to indicate impulsive decision-making. Plaintiffs in a lawsuit are urgently requesting that the Kennedy Center be placed in receivership to ensure its proper stewardship.
The Kennedy Center was made possible by the efforts of multiple administrations and a talented group of designers, working together to envision a cradle for American arts. But it is also the product of generations of creative artists and performers and the audiences who have filled its halls, making joyous music and communing through a love of art.
In 1974, just three years after the Center opened, Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) spoke about its impact and the long, fruitful collaborations that led to its creation: “The Kennedy Center is a symbol of the aspirations of the American people to attract the respect and allegiance of other people by virtue of our exemplary society and the quality of life afforded our citizens.”
No plan for alteration to the Kennedy Center should be unilateral – the same spirit of collaboration, optimism, and public generosity should guide its next 50 years.