Kennedy Center to commission anti-racism works with help of National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera
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“What I would love to see is that this is something that we start and is taken up by colleagues across the country as a way to continue the memory of the individuals who we lost in this way,” Rutter said. “Saying I hope we do a dozen doesn’t really mean anything because a dozen doesn’t begin to cover the individuals we lost. It’s more about starting a project.”
The Kennedy Center will also launch an online performance series, “Arts Across America,” to spotlight community arts leaders, unique regional arts styles, and organizations and artists focused on social justice. The 20-week program, supported by Facebook, will feature performances every weekday afternoon from July 27 through Dec. 11. Jazz bassist Christian McBride, poet and children’s book author Kwame Alexander and musician Aloe Blacc are among the hundreds who will participate.
The two programs were announced Thursday as part of a larger effort to strengthen and deepen programs for black artists, audiences and communities. On June 2, as nationwide protests raged against police brutality and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier, the Kennedy Center issued a statement in support of black lives, culture and artists.
“We pledge that more of them will be heard on the stages of the nation’s cultural center, as we continue in our ongoing effort to reflect the entire nation through the performing arts and within our organization,” the statement said. “We know we can do better — through the art we present on our stages and by ensuring that the center is always a home for critical conversations about race and discrimination.”
The multipronged approach expands on the work of the center’s Social Impact division, created in 2018, and establishes an institutional mandate that moves beyond gestures, said Marc Bamuthi Joseph, vice president and artistic director of Social Impact.
“This is how we move forward, not just with symbols but with an interconnected system of activity that we are committed to,” Joseph said. “We begin with belief that if racism is structural, then anti-racism also must be structural.”
Joseph and his team last year launched a program to support the Washington-area arts landscape, including school partnerships, mini artist residencies and a Culture Caucus, a collective of artists and organizations. Members of the caucus receive direct financial support as well as in-kind services such as marketing aid and use of the Reach, the expansion that opened last fall with rehearsal, classroom and performance spaces. Other programs focused on black artists and audiences, unified under the banner #BlackCultureMatters, will start soon, Joseph said.
“Here is where we codify, organize and think about the effort cohesively,” he said. “It’s not like we haven’t been working with black artists. But what we haven’t done is come together, with an organized model. We now have a pathway. It’s not a treadmill, we’re not walking in place. We’re moving forward.”
The arts center will also focus on diversity, equity and inclusion within the institution by strengthening existing hiring practices and training and mentoring programs, Rutter said. People of color represent just under 30 percent of the arts center’s total staff, including those who have been furloughed during the pandemic, she said. Thirty one percent of senior leadership identifies as nonwhite.
“We’re making headway, but there’s still a long way to go,” she said, adding that she doesn’t have a specific goal or time frame for increasing these numbers.
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