MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The arts world was shocked when President Trump claimed last weekend to have the power to remove board members and to declare himself chairman of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here in Washington, D.C. Trump told reporters he'd do that because the Kennedy Center shows were, quote, "terrible and a disgrace." Then he conceded he had never seen one. All this is without precedent. NPR's Bob Mondello says the history of the National Cultural Center has been marked by cooperation and independence until now.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The very first preview performance at The Kennedy Center in 1971 was attended not by the glittering celebrities who'd be at the opening Gala two nights later, but by the general public, and they went nuts over Leonard Bernstein's theater piece "Mass."
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LEONARD BERNSTEIN: (Singing) I'm so crazy-minded. I keep on kind of enjoying it.
MONDELLO: The evening ended with a thunderous 20-minute ovation. Bernstein wept. He was a celebrated weeper. Elsewhere, though, there were sighs of relief. Since Dwight Eisenhower first proposed building a new auditorium - singular - to show off American artists in 1955, it had taken four presidents - two Republican and two Democrat - and 16 years to get the center up and running. Former President Eisenhower told the crowd at a 1962 fundraiser the idea sprang from his learning as he led allied troops in World War II that America had global respect for its might and industry. But in terms of culture, it was not uncommon...
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DWIGHT EISENHOWER: To hear our country spoken of as one of the colonies, and it was in sort of a condescending tone.
MONDELLO: The solution, he decided, was to build a cultural center that would put Washington on an even footing with other world capitals.
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EISENHOWER: It would be sort of a artistic mecca that would be open to visitors from every land.
MONDELLO: President Kennedy also spoke at the fundraiser, arguing just one month after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis that culture had great practical value in an age of conflict.
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JOHN F KENNEDY: The encouragement of art is political in the most profound sense, not as a weapon in the struggle but as an instrument of understanding of the futility of struggle.
MONDELLO: He noted that even at the height of Cold War tensions, millions of Soviet citizens read Mark Twain and Robert Frost, just as Americans read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
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KENNEDY: Art knows no national boundaries. Genius can speak in any tongue, and the entire world will hear it and listen.
MONDELLO: The logistics of letting it listen, though, were complicated. The center was established as a public-private hybrid. The National Parks Service is responsible for upkeep of the building - Congress appropriates money for that. But the legislation establishing the center calls for its programming to be sustained through ticket sales and private funding. In short, apart from acquiring a broad range of performances, both classical and contemporary, the government would not have a direct say in what played at the center. And from the outset, that independence was tested.
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MONDELLO: Bernstein's "Mass" had a strong anti-establishment, anti-war message, and with fighting raging in Vietnam, that would have made it an uncomfortable sit for then-President Richard Nixon. He was diplomatic, saying he felt the night should really belong to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and that he would attend the National Symphony's first performance in the new concert hall instead.
Subsequent presidents have also been hands-off, except in appointing the center's board of directors, who have historically been evenly balanced between Republicans and Democrats. The actual booking of the center's attractions is handled by staff who juggle schedules for more than 2,000 performances that play to 2 million patrons every year. The Kennedy Center has hosted dance, music and theater from all over. Its fourth season included the first joint American appearance of Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera. And just three years later, as if to banish doubts about its commitment to the cultural diplomacy President Kennedy championed, the center hosted a moment fraught with symbolism since Kennedy had been the president who tried to topple the Castro regime, as Susan Stamberg told NPR audiences in 1978.
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SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: U.S.-Cuban cultural relations may have reached an all-time high. Last night, the National Ballet Company of Cuba opened at The Kennedy Center here in Washington, and the nation's dance critics hailed the performance as an historic event.
MONDELLO: The Center has also coproduced shows that have gone on to great success elsewhere, including the musical "Annie." It's just-closed world premiere of a stage version of Apple TV's "Schmigadoon!" may also be headed for Broadway.
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DOVE CAMERON: (As Betsy) She's never heard of corn pudding.
KEEGAN MICHAEL KEY: (As Josh Skinner) Oh, no, it's a song. You started another song.
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KEY: Oh, God.
MONDELLO: In short, the center has remained true for more than half a century to its namesake's conception of culture as a democratic ideal.
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KENNEDY: The mere accumulation of wealth and power is available to the dictator and the Democrat alike. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit, which finds its greatest flowering in the free society.
MONDELLO: President Kennedy, speaking at that 1962 fundraiser for the center that came to bear his name. I'm Bob Mondello.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) S-C-H-M-I-G-A-D-O-O-N. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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