The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, commonly known as the Kennedy Center, is a cultural center located on the eastern bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. It is considered the national cultural center of the United States, serving as a "living memorial" to John F. Kennedy. The center opened on September 8, 1971, and hosts many genres of performance art, spanning theater, ballet, modern dance, classical music, jazz, pop, psychedelic, and folk music. The Kennedy Center is the residence of the National Symphony Orchestra.
Authorized by the National Cultural Center Act of 1958, which requires that its programming be sustained through private funds, the center represents a public–private partnership. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through ticket sales and gifts from individuals, corporations, and private foundations. The center receives annual federal funding to cover building maintenance and operations.
The original building, designed by Edward Durell Stone, is administered as a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution. An extension designed by Steven Holl opened in 2019. In 1968, George London became the Kennedy Center's first executive director. In 1991, Lawrence Wilker became its first president. In 2014, Deborah Rutter became its third president and the first woman to hold the post.
In 2025, President Donald Trump dismissed the center's trustees and replaced them with people who elected him chairman and voted to add his name to the center, a move later determined to be illegal. Consequently, ticket sales declined, dozens of performances were canceled, and the Washington National Opera ended its half-century of residence. In February 2026, Trump said that the center would close in July for two years of renovations. In May 2026, U.S. district judge Christopher R. "Casey" Cooper blocked the Kennedy Center from closing during its renovations and ordered that Trump's name be removed from the building, which occurred on June 13, 2026. In September 2026, Trump threatened to demolish the building unless his name was returned to the facade.
The idea for a national cultural center dates to 1933 when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt discussed ideas for the Emergency Relief and Civil Works Administration to alleviate unemployment among American thespians during the Great Depression. Congress held hearings in 1935 for plans to establish a Cabinet-level "Department of Science, Art and Literature", and to build a monumental theater and arts building on Capitol Hill near the Supreme Court building. A 1938 Congressional resolution called for the construction of a "public building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center" near Judiciary Square, but this never materialized.
The idea for a national theater resurfaced in 1950, when U.S. representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience. In 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center.
From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy. A bill was finally passed in Congress in the summer of 1958, and on September 4, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Cultural Center Act into law, which provided momentum for the project.
This was the first time that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, to be raised within five years of the bill's passage. Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the President's Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, double the original estimates of $25–30 million. By November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million.
Despite this, Stone's design was well received in editorials in The Washington Post and Washington Star, and was quickly approved by the United States Commission of Fine Arts, National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service.
The National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group President Eisenhower established on January 29, 1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years. President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nation's capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, and serve as chairman of the board of trustees. Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as the center's honorary chairman, and former first lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman.
In January 1961, Jarold A. Kieffer became the first executive director of the National Cultural Center, overseeing numerous fundraising efforts and assisting with the architectural plan. At the time of the assassination of President Kennedy, the National Cultural Center had only raised $13 million. Its board then re-envisioned the project as a "living memorial" to him, and Congress renamed it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964.
The total cost of construction was $70 million. Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, and approximately $500,000 from the Kennedy family.
Other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a donation from the Italian government of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble mined from the Apuan Alps (worth $1.5 million). The marble slabs, "each roughly 8 feet by 4 feet and 5 inches thick", according to The New York Times, were installed between 1968 and 1970 and used for the facade and interior walls. It was sourced from the Bufalini family quarry, a supplier favored by Kennedy Center architect Edward Durell Stone.
President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center on December 2, 1964. However, debate continued for another year over the Foggy Bottom site, with some advocating for another location on Pennsylvania Avenue. Excavation of the site got underway on December 11, 1965, and the site was cleared by January 1967.
The first performance was September 5, 1971, with 2,200 members of the general public in attendance to see a premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass in the Opera House, while the center's official opening took place September 8, 1971, with a formal gala and premiere performance of the Bernstein Mass.
The Concert Hall was inaugurated September 9, 1971, with a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Doráti. Alberto Ginastera's opera, Beatrix Cenci premiered at the Kennedy Center Opera House September 10, 1971. The Eisenhower Theater was inaugurated October 18, 1971, with a performance of A Doll's House starring Claire Bloom.
On June 16, 1971, Congress authorized appropriations for one year to the board of trustees for operating and maintenance expenses. In the following years, the appropriations were provided to the National Park Service for operations, maintenance, security, safety, and other functions not directly related to the performing arts activities. The National Park Service and the Kennedy Center signed a cooperative agreement requiring each party to pay a portion of the operating and maintenance costs based on what proportion of time the building was to be used for performing arts functions. The agreement did not specify who was responsible for long-term capital improvement projects at the Kennedy Center, and it provided only periodic funding from Congress for one-time projects.