(What’s Next is back…for this post at least!)
A somewhat recent commentary from a decades-long arts industry professional, who chose to offer their take on the value of the Kennedy Center to the nation and what it should become in the future, left me overwhelmed.
And not in a good way.
Their commentary, and a two-part “follow-up” by another seasoned arts worker, both of which were equally ill-informed in my opinion, confirmed an observation of mine. Articles and opinions about the Center that started pouring in post-February 7, 2025 are missing part of its story. While there have been many things written, commentary made about what the Kennedy Center has lost subsequent to that time— ticket sales, subscriptions, donations, artist cancellations, staffing changes, and governance i.e. institutional metrics —no one has really written about what the country has lost as a result of the actions from February 2025 on.
As a former employee with more than a decade served there and naturally a lot of bias, I dm’d this arts professional and asked that they reconsider their perspective. Especially when one considers the amount of programming and data they chose NOT to include in their assessment of the Center’s value to this country. Information that is readily available via annual reports that provide significant metrics from 2023 and before, on the KC website (https://www.kennedy-center.org/search-page/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=annual%20report&gsc.sort=)
I made a quick, short defense but offered that I had numbers to back up my assertion that the Kennedy Center was of far greater value to the country than they had articulated for their readers.
This person stood by their assessment, rooted primarily in a specific consulting experience and as an audience member. It was this response that confirmed my resolve: the only way these narratives would be set right, so that readers had something more to consider when making their own determinations about the value of the Center to their lives and the country, was if I did it myself.
With a little more time than I have right now, and help from colleagues, I am certain I could illustrate any number of artistic, educational, and community engagement efforts over the Center’s more than five decades in existence. Illustrations that challenge the notions put forth by these commentaries in particular that it did not reach people across the country or beyond; that it was only a roadhouse on the river; and that regardless of the current state of the physical structure, the artistry produced there could happen anywhere.
Now there certainly is truth in the observation that the art created at the Center could happen anywhere else in the country. It was. It is. In small towns and big cities across the US, countless struggling but talented artists, arts administrators, arts educators, and all in between have or are winding down inspired artistic, community engagement, and arts education seasons. And they are teeing up the very real, arduous, and passionate work of finalizing plans and determining logistics and strategies for the next.
While we did have many incredible programs that stretched across the nation and added value to the country, none of us who did or still work at the Center that were part of Deborah Rutter’s administration, or any previous ones can take credit for the creativity being nurtured by those artists and administrators across the US. Maybe we inspired some of it. Who truly knows?
We certainly were inspired by it because what we did do, among many other things that no one has truly articulated, was our best to promote that art and those artists across this country and abroad. Which is what a National Cultural Center should endeavor to do. There is value in that. But there is also untold value that I think should be shared, if for no other reason than to dispel the commentary by these arts professionals that the Kennedy Center provided little value to the country.
So, I will jump way back and then leap forward and hopefully what I will have shared will enlighten not only the casual reader, but those who think they know best about the value and impact the Kennedy Center had on Americans, using documented information and data collected prior to 2025.
I will start with Louis Armstrong’s 1960–61 African tour.
As part of the State Department’s Jazz Ambassador program, which was inaugurated in 1956 under Eisenhower (for which the “Ike” Theatre in the Center is named) and elevated under Kennedy, Armstrong performed in 27 cities and was even lauded in the Congo as an "Ambassador Extraordinary of the United States." Though not directly linked to the Center, this tour and the subsequent collaboration between John F. Kennedy’s administration and artists such as Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, and Sidney Poitier, among so many others, influenced countless aspects of the impact the Kennedy Center endeavored to achieve over its five decades.
Fast forward to the end of the fiscal year 2024, and these unpublished but gathered numbers that would have made it into the Center’s 2024 Annual Report (FY24) speak volumes about what value has been lost:
1.4 MILLION paid and free tickets distributed
2.1 MILLION + visitors
1,755 performances
2,000+ total events
450+ free programs
10 MILLION web visitors
95 MILLION video views for a total of 4 million hours
297 MILLION social media impressions
Maybe this does not mean that much to some. Maybe those individuals, including the commentators who more than suggest the Kennedy Center brought little value to the country but are quick to articulate what the Center should become, will not see the value in these figures. Let me offer another set on the Education Department’s value in FY24:
2.2 MILLION educators, administrators, and students reached across 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 16 countries
1.9 MILLION students reached through school and community programs
5,663 visitors to the REACH’s Moonshot Studio
200,075 students from 1,286 schools—497 Title I schools—attended 92 school performances both at the Kennedy Center and virtually
1.5 million users virtually accessed digital learning materials across the Center’s Education web pages a total of 2.1 million times
Here are another few interesting tidbits:
Since its opening in 2019, the REACH (as of end FY24) welcomed 2.2 million visitors to enjoy more than 8,700 performances, classes, rehearsals, and events.
DVOŘÁK DREAMS, Refik Anadol’s acclaimed fusion of art, music, history, and artificial intelligence which made its U.S. premiere at the REACH in 2024 welcomed 12,600 visitors and gained 1 million+ digital impressions.
Through its Social Impact Programming, the Kennedy Center presented 370 events that engaged 1,992 artists and reached more than 78,559 audience members. Programming featured 1,251 local artists, 708 national artists, and 343 international artists, while generating more than 356,450 online views, extending the Center's impact well beyond its campus and into communities across the nation and around the world.
Performances for Young Audiences commissioned/ co-commissioned five world premiere works; offered 52 Theater for Young Audiences performances at the Kennedy Center attended by 12,672 students from 165 schools, and presented 48 Theater for Young Audiences On Tour performances attended by 20,886 audience members across the country.
The last International Programming Festival, Earth to Space, achieved incredible impact over a short 24 days:
Festival participants:
16 Countries
324 Festival Participants + the NSO
270 Performers, Visual Artists, Designers, Architects, Filmmakers + the NSO musicians
54 Scientists, Astronauts, Nobel Laureates
195 Volunteers
TOTAL OF 59 EVENTS (WITH 116 PERFORMANCES / SCREENINGS)
2 World Premiere Performances and 1 World Premiere Installation
5 US Premiere Performances
5 Commissions
Festival Attendance:
42% of people who purchased tickets to festival events were first time Kennedy Center buyers.
32,927 people came to the REACH campus to attend exhibits and festival programs.
9,000 people attended The Moonwalkers 360-degree immersive screenings.
8,717 people attended performances and panels at the Eisenhower Theater, Terrace Theater, Family Theater, Concert Hall, and at the River Pavilion’s Moon Rock Club.
1,080 people attended panels with astronauts, scientists and more.
768 people attended workshops lead by NASA's experts and a space suit designer.
A year-long International Student Cultural Exchange program in collaboration with NASA engaged approximately 150 students and teachers in 5 classrooms from the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, and Senegal who learned from 5 NASA experts.
11,000 estimated number of onsite viewers for special firework and projection display on the Potomac River + thousands of people at Rock Creek Park and across the Potomac River.
Commentators who remark with concern or derision regarding Washington National Opera’s decision to leave the Center do not consider WNO’s strength. Their exceptional programming is exemplified by just a few recent examples including a partnership with the US Military over their world premiere production of Grounded; thousands of audience members who attended their free Opera In the Outfield each summer at Nationals Park; or their new production of the revered Turandot, which received a new narrative ending by Emmy-awarded Susan Soon He Stanton, and accompanying score by Grammy-awarded Christopher Tin, that will have a run at The Dallas Opera in February 2027.
The National Symphony Orchestra’s In Your Neighborhood program regularly engaged thousands of residents in DC neighborhoods with a full week of orchestral performances and related events each fiscal year since its advent in 2011. Their Music for Young Audiences and Young People’s Concerts welcomed more 20,000 students across both programs annually. As well, NSO’s contributions to national and international cultural diplomacy since the orchestra’s establishment are well documented, including a recent trip to four countries which was reported on by the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2024/02/21/national-symphony-orchestra-european-tour-preparation/).
Clearly, the Center was not just a roadhouse on the river. Further, these figures and examples truly only scratch the surface of what the country has lost. And while I will again remind folks that these numbers were not yet published, the Kennedy Center website still has the annual reports for 2021, 2022, and 2023 posted there (linked above) to hold these figures up against.
I will not even try to articulate the economic impact of the Center on the DMV. I simply do not have the data, but to say that it is in the millions could be an understatement.
You will make up your own minds about the value of the Center to you, to this country. My intent here is to ultimately ask that you please do so with more than just someone’s thoughts on that value, that bear no receipts, to inform you. Also, if you do not have a direct connection to the Kennedy Center, ask someone you know if they do. I bet you might be no more than a couple of, if not merely "one degree of Kevin Bacon separation" away from it. That REACH is part of the Center's value too.
What’s Next?
-SAA
July 27, 2026
PS: If you want to learn more about what some of us are doing to help articulate and secure culture and the value of culture across this country, visit Brett Egan of the DeVos Institute on LinkedIn , and learn more about an effort he and two of his colleagues have catalyzed, to coalesce individuals from all industries across the country and the world, around the questions below that he has posed.
The Thesis (for a new National Cultural Center)
As the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts enters a period of dormancy and faces an uncertain future, I have invited the question of what it would mean to platform a Temporary, Virtual National Cultural Center. This is not meant to “replace” the Kennedy Center or “own” the conversation about how the Kennedy Center might look when it is reactivated. Inevitably, some of these discussions may contribute to ideas about future activities at or roles of the Kennedy Center itself. But that is not its sole focus or founding energy.
Rather, this is envisioned to be a broad, inclusive, exploratory, imaginative public exercise through which artists, organizations, educators, futurists, researchers, and citizens can respond to the questions, free for a time from physical constraint:
· “What is a ‘national cultural center’?”
· “If not restricted to a building, or single building, or even to physical space, what form or forms might it take?”
· “Looking ahead, what role or roles might a national cultural center for the United States play?”