Once again, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in the news. I awoke to read that the president has decided to close the Center for two years for renovations. He said in a tweet last night that it’s closed for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.” He continues, “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.”
My heart sank. The Kennedy Center is not meant to showcase a building and all the (fake) gilded accoutrements that Trump surrounds himself with in the now ridiculous Oval Office. Its role is to showcase PEOPLE and the ART they create. It’s a backdrop to allow the performances and the creative arts to shine, rather as plain white walls in museums are designed to allow paintings to take center stage and sculptures to stand without distraction.
The memories of the Kennedy Center of my youth are grand because of the scale of the building and the simplicity and grace of the design. I love the red carpets and the elegant light fixtures, which welcome you inside and provide a hint of the main attraction—whether it be classic tuxedo-clad orchestra players or elaborate, glittering costumes of the opera singers—which awaits you beyond the glass doors.
“Far better than it has ever been before”…are Trumps words. For more than 50 years the Kennedy Center has hosted thousands of the world’s best artists in their respective fields. How can that be improved? Those who put their hearts and souls into their performances and lived a life of creativity to entertain and educate the rest of us are WHO make the Kennedy Center great. Their talents allow us to immerse ourselves into the amazing, stretch our senses beyond the norm, and revel in what human beings can do and create. We then exit through that classical “white space” as we leave the building and slowly soak in what we’ve just witnessed. It’s that slow release—without gilded distractions—that allows us to create our own special memories and feelings that may last a lifetime.
No matter how the Kennedy Center is transformed in the years to come, I’ll always savor those memories I made there. I’ll especially recall the red carpet that carried me down the stairs to my seat and into the minds of those remarkable people who took the stage and made magic happen right before my eyes.
