The general public is invited to join this historic occasion by attending a free livestream broadcast at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage North or online at www.kennedy-center.org/expansion. In December 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke ground for the construction of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Now almost 50 years later to the date, the Kennedy Center will break ground for its Expansion Project on Thursday, December 4 at 10:30 a.m.
As a “living memorial” for John F. Kennedy, the Center for the Performing Arts takes an active position among the great presidential monuments of the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. Steven Holl Architects envisions the expansion of the building to fuse with the landscape and river, instead of being an appendage object. As the institution enters its fifth decade, the Expansion Project will be a place where the community can engage and interact with artists and their creative output in inspired and meaningful ways, across the full spectrum of the creative process.