Entertainment

THE REHEARSAL

Kennedy Center too dangerous for the Honors, not too dangerous for the orchestra

By LouOne More Question · the early bird edition, 7 October 2026

Can I say something nice before I get into my notebook? The Kennedy Center Honors has gone off at the same address every December since 1978, and whoever's kept that streak alive deserves some credit, because my own car can't manage forty-eight hours without a hitch, let alone forty-eight years.

I carry the notebook because my memory's garbage, not because I think I'm smart. So — just a second, let me find where I wrote this down... here it is. "The Capital One Arena in Washington DC is now set to host the ceremony." A Kennedy Center spokesperson said that. First time, as far as I can tell, that the ceremony hasn't been held at its own building.

I don't pretend to know what happened in between. I know about my garage, mostly — the kind of place where you keep telling yourself you'll clear out the extension cords someday. But I went looking the way you go looking for a torque wrench you know you own, and I found this: on a Tuesday in September, the board — handpicked, I wrote that word down twice because it struck me — voted to close the main building. Renovations, somebody said. I wrote that down too.

And then there's a photograph. I didn't take it, a photographer named Brendan Smialowski did, on Air Force One, of a printout somebody was holding. I can only read my own handwriting on this part, so I'll just read it back: the printout said "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED." Capital letters, the way I wrote it.

My dog won't go back in that garage once I've told her it's dangerous in there. She takes my word for it and she stays out the next morning, too. I only bring her up because I keep turning this over: if a building is dangerous enough that the board votes to shut it, dangerous enough that a man carries a printout with the word "demolished" on his own airplane, dangerous enough that an awards show skips its own home for the first time — what is it doing holding an orchestra?

I wrote the headline down because it put the question better than I could: "If the Kennedy Center Is Dangerous, Why Is the Symphony Rehearsing There?" That's the paper asking, not me. I don't have an answer. I checked my notebook twice.

Kerry Kennedy called the board's vote a tragedy. I wrote that down. And somewhere in my notes — I had to read this one back slow, because it surprised me — somebody from the Kennedy family itself called the whole business "how small minded, how narcissistic." Family, about family. I don't know what to do with a quote like that except hand it back to you the way I found it.

So here's where I keep getting stuck, and maybe it's nothing. The main building's closed. The ceremony left for a basketball arena. The printout exists, DEMOLISHED, capital letters. And this week — not next year, not someday, this week — the National Symphony Orchestra is inside that same building, rehearsing.

Oh — hang on, before you go, one thing almost got past me. If that building's too dangerous to host an awards ceremony it's hosted every single December, the first skip of its kind, then what exactly changed about it since 1978?

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