"On March 16th, the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center capitulated to President Donald Trump's plan to close the complex this summer for a supposedly essential two-year-long renovation. "I'm not ripping it down," Trump has said. "I'll be using the steel. So we're using the structure. We're using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down." The vagueness is ominous."
"Trump made similar assurances before ordering the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. No one should be surprised if Edward Durell Stone's streamlined modernist shoebox changes beyond recognition. When the Kennedy Center opened, in 1971, the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, finding the design a little too redolent of Albert Speer's fascist monumentalism, described it as "gemütlich Speer." We may now get echt Speer."
A Washington, D.C. native reflects on formative experiences at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, recalling performances by renowned conductors and artists from the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Kennedy Center's board approved President Trump's plan to close the complex for a two-year renovation beginning in summer. Trump's vague statements about using existing steel, structure, and marble, combined with his history of ordering demolitions like the White House East Wing, raise concerns about significant alterations to Edward Durell Stone's modernist architecture. The original 1971 design was already criticized for resembling fascist monumentalism, and the renovation could fundamentally change the building's character.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]