On September 8, 1971, Washington, D.C., formally inaugurated the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, establishing a major new national home for theater, dance, and music. The gala in the Opera House featured the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers, an ambitious work commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the opening. Although public preview performances had begun several days earlier, the September 8 event marked the Center’s official inauguration and a national tribute to the late 35th president.
The emotional center of the evening was Rose Kennedy, the president’s mother, who appeared in the Opera House’s Presidential Box with her son, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and his wife, Joan Kennedy. The audience gave her a standing ovation. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not attend; contemporary reporting said she had decided against appearing because of the personal anguish and intense attention the gala would bring. Even in her absence, her role was evident in the evening’s centerpiece: Bernstein had written Mass at her request.
The Center’s opening represented the culmination of a long bipartisan federal project. Congress had authorized the National Cultural Center in 1958, during the Eisenhower administration. After President Kennedy’s assassination, Congress renamed it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation in January 1964, formally establishing it as a living memorial to Kennedy.
Designed by Edward Durell Stone on the Potomac’s edge, the building immediately joined memorial purpose with artistic function. Its inauguration bound Kennedy’s name to an institution intended not simply to commemorate a president, but to sustain the nation’s performing arts for generations.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
