Ground Broken for Kennedy Center Expansion

Steven Holl, the architect for the Kennedy Center’s first major expansion ever, sat down in a seat on the shuttle bus taking media, patrons, and guests to the ground breaking hoopla for the expansion project.

“Well, as long as we’re here, I guess I can talk a little bit about this,” he said. “It’s just such a terribly important project. I can tell you what I remember that inspired me. I remember when I was in junior high school, watching President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, in the cold, and Robert Frost, the great white haired American poet walking up to the podium so slowly with his breath visible. When we were presenting this, I asked ‘does anybody remember that’ and David Rubenstein (the Kennedy Center Chairman) said, “I do, I do. I remember it.”

So do I. So does anybody who was alive that day with a beating heart and a television set.

They all gathered this day to a tent where earth was shoveled from the place(s) where the renovation will occur and is expected to be completed by May of 2017. Holl, Rubenstein, new Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, new Kennedy Center trustee Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (the granddaughter of President Kennedy) and special guest Vice President Joe Biden all presided over the groundbreaking, in which a gold plated shovel was used. It was a very special shovel—used for the ground breaking not only of the original Kennedy Center by President Lyndon Baynes Johnson, but also by President Howard Taft for the ground breaking of the Lincoln Memorial and President Franklin Roosevelt for the groundbreaking of the Jefferson memorial.

Biden, a spring in his step as always, eloquently spoke about how Picasso “once said that all children are artists—we need to learn how to allow those children to become artists when they grow up. That’s what this is all about. It’s about education, access, which this expansion will increase.”

Kennedy’s inscripted words were often quoted throughout the day, including the famous one in which he said, “I look forward to an America in which we will reward achievements in the art, as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

“I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.”

Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, speaking to an audience that included Vicki Kennedy, also a member of the center’s board of trustees, said, “My grandparents believed that American civilization had come of age, and they transformed the White Housed into a stage for our nation’s greatest performing artists. They recognized that in order to demonstrate our full commitment to freedom, democracy and the human spirit, our nation’s capital needed a world-class performing arts center.”

Rutter—whose abiding themes in her first few months as Kennedy Center President have been more accessibility, education, a kind of democratization of the performing art—said that the mission of the center demands that the Kennedy Center be at the center of cultural life in our nation.

Rubenstein, who contributed $50 million to the Kennedy Center’s expansion, said that the project was entirely funded by private donations. “What we are starting today is not just a new building but a transformation of the Kennedy Center into a performing arts center, ready for artists and patrons needs of the 21st Century.”

Holl emphasized that the Kennedy Center is a “living memorial, with interactions and uses on a daily basis for all people.” The additions—which are south of the current space—will include new and large rehearsal spaces, facilities with soaring spaces, filled with natural light (a Holl trademark). It will also include space for simulcasting, small spaces where people can gather and gardens and rows of gingko trees announcing the changing of the seasons.

It will also fulfill earlier dreams of providing a connection to the Potomac River with the River Pavilion, a new space on the Potomac River with small scale performance spaces for concerts and poetry readings.