Transportation security issues. Now the new president of the Kennedy Center for the performing arts, Deborah Rutter, outlines her u future plans and emphasizes the importance of arts and education and cultural diplomacy, from the National Press club, this is an hour. Good afternoon, and welcome. My name is myron delkheim, the Washington School of media and Public Affairs and former International Bureau chief with the Associated Press and the 107th president of the National Press club, the National Press club is the worlds leading committed to our professions future through our programming, with events such as this, while fostering a free press worldwide. For more information about the National Press club, please visit our website at press. Org. On behalf of our members worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker and those of you attending todays event. Our head table includes guests of our speaker as well as working journal iists who are cb members, if you hear applause in our audience, note that members of i would also like to welcome our cspan and public radio audiences, after our guest speech concludes, well have a question and answer period and well ask as many questions as time permits. Now its time to introduce our head table guests. I wou i would like each of you to stand as your name is announced. Elizabeth smith brownstein, a member of the press clubs history and Heritage Committee and a writer of our online newsletters this week in the National Press club history. Doris margolis, president of Editorial Associates and a member of the Speakers Committee. Yasmine el sabowi. Adrian arst, leading arts fila philanthropist who is a major funder of the adrian arst musical fund. Ga chairman of the Speakers Committee and National President of National Press club. Amy henderson, historian emeritus at the National Portrait gallery and coorganizer of this luncheon. Thank you, amy and thank you, nick. Helen lee, henderson. Important filphilanthropist who serves on the board of the Kennedy Center national orchestra, she too is a guest of our speaker. Maria resioresio. Ken melgren, chairman of the board of governors of the National Press club, former chair of the broadcast committee and a retired staffer from the Associated Press broadcast division and michael phelps, former publisher and advisor to news media executives. Please, round of ah applause. A year before his death, president john f. Kennedy spoke on behalf of the National Cultural center that would ultimately bear his name. Quote, after the dust of centuries has passed, he said, we too will be remembered, not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the hue mma spirit, unquote. This year Deborah Rutter became the president of the john f. Kennedy center for performing arts. She grew up in a family that loved music, her father was a founder of the los angeles master correll. Rutter began playing the violin as a child and she said that playing the violin is how i found out who i was. Rutter comes to washington from chicago, where she was president of the chicago Symphony Orchestra association, she said she was drawn to the Kennedy Center for the opportunity to use arts to affect the rest of the world. She wants to develop greater collaborations with other arts associations, including museums, theaters and untraditional groups. She said the Kennedy Center should have a seat at the table in dealing with challenging social and cultural issues. Rutter is a prolific fundraiser known for recruiting top talent. Here she will serve as artistic and administrative leader for dance, Chamber Music and jazz. She will also oversee the national Symphony Orchestra and the national opera. She will be inheriting an ambitious 100 million renovation. Please join me in welcoming the new president of the Kennedy Center, Deborah Rutter. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I think he said it all. So were done now, we can all have a nice afternoon. Thank you, myron for the invitation to be here, thank you, nick, thank you, amy for the opportunity to be here and for your very generous words. Youve done Great Research also. I understand. It is a pleasure and honor for me to be here, when you dont live in washington, d. C. , this place, this place right here, not just washington, d. C. , but this place is a very aweinspiring place. I am really grateful to my friends who are here from the Kennedy Center and who care about the arts and our society. I want to say thank you to adrian and to helen for being my stalwart, theyre side by side. Great friends and a support. Ive been thinking a lot about storytelling recently. Im not exactly sure why. But as i think about it, theres some sign posts perhaps. This has been a year of major transition for me and my family. And as one says farewell to one home, a community and the friends there, it leaves you to reflect to some degree to commemorate your time there. Last spring, i had many, many opportunities to share memories, tell stories and laugh about shared history. Also in moving, you know the trauma of moving. You uncover all kinds of things. And we have come across countless boxes of memorabilia, some recent, some really ancient, all of which jogs ones memories of stories that are told and some untold. Then of course, my daughter who has the same propensity to keep things that her mother has, has child hood storybooks and theyre plentiful, recalling for me the moments of joy and intimacy and wonder in the telling and retelling of those wonderful stories. To perhaps this is why i have a preoccupation with storytelling right now. Arriving in washington has been an adventure for all of us, meeting new friends colleagues, such as here today, connecting with old friends, which has been really wonderful for me. Learning the system of how the city works my daughter finding her new ways around her school and for me, a new place to work, and let me tell you, that is a real study, figuring out out to get around there. Again, stories are plenty testimony, as i introduce myself and hear about the history and the people of our new home. You might say, well, thats what washington, d. C. Is all about. But i would say that this is what our world is all about. Not just washington, but our world. Its about storytelling. Storytelling is the way we share who we are with others. It is a way to reveal ones self, to communicate feelings and ideas. With our stories we share history, get to know one another. Storytelling connects us and represents the draw strings of our lives. All of us are storytellers in one form or another. Some of us are better or funnier than others, some more colorful and creative. Others more liberal and concise, but we are allteling one story or another. Just to make sure i was on the right track i went to the ultimate source and typed in definition of storytelling on my internet browser. The result, storytelling is the conveying of words and images about events as a narrative. Stories have been shared in many instilling moral values. I didnt have to look far to find out exactly what i was looking for in terms of that definition. So with this definition, it argues that journalists are true professional storytellers. Hopefully without too much embellishment or improvisation. Journalists provide the heroic role of documents our collective lives, our shared history, you are the ones we engage with every day, or hopefully every day, every day in my case. Your work provides the recorded history we reflect back on to understand who we are as a culture, what actions were taken, what decisions were made, what we have done as a result of those decisions, how we reached, how the larger world has responded. So i put forth to you that art is just another form of storytelling. It provides the narrative to our lives. A way of advancing as well as preserving our culture. A story as conveyed through artistic express comes in varying forms. Sometimes its literal, sometimes it is obscure or initially beyond understanding. It can be fun and entertaining, engrossing and provokive. No matter the media or the actual story, it is always making one think and feel. Theater, opera, dance, music, film and the visual arts, all of these are telling us stories. Sure, often there is just Pure Entertainment to be enjoyed as well. Who doesnt need that . Maybe now more than ever. But an evening of socalled Pure Entertainment is also likely a time when other information and ideas are bubbling inside. I saw avito with my daughter and her friend. It will be fun. But the truth, yes, great music, wonderful actors, telling a story, what is that story about . The struggle of lower class to break out of its cycle of poverty. Overwhelming narcissism, greed, consuming power that bringing down the not just a woman and a family, but a whole country. Yes avita is a story about history using the theater to convey, not just the details, but emotions, insights and values. The performing arts highlight all of the emotions of our world. Shine a spot light on topics we sometimes dare not to debate, stories th stories that force us to feel feelings we want to brush aside. Yet experienced individually in our heart and our mind. With avita, we look back on an era of a country, its history. In the case of tony cushners angels in america, we are faced with the reality of life experienced by another part of our society. That epic play changed the way we talk about gay life and aids. While it was perhaps shocking when it premiered in its format, dialogue and frank treatment of the issues, it was ultimately one of the first and most perfect expressions on that topic, using the theater again as a way to explore social issues. So think about swan lake, reflect on the rite of spring, consider backes st. Matthews passion, which i love so much. All are stories to be told using the performing arts to communicate beauty, perspective, thoughtfulness, spirituality. They also challenge us as we sit in that darkened theater, to understand ourselves, consider our society and our environment. My argument, art is certainly for arts sake, i really agree with that statement and i support all who utter it. But i also fervently believe in the concept of art for lifes sake, that we cannot live or share this World Without art. Art is the way we tell the stories of our lives, to offer commentary on the world we live in, to provide a sanctuary for personal, spiritual reflection, an opportunity to state more boldly those ideas that may feel too difficult, too dangerous for whatever reason, too personal or socially challenging. Or better yet, the eye and the exultation of life. The examples of bach and st b i want to tell you now of quite a different example. When we announced in chicago that ricardo muti would become our tenth music director, he surprised us not for the first nor the last time, i should say, by announcing at his Introductory Press Conference that he wanted to take the opera to all parts of chicago, especially those without access to music, even to prisons. He and i spoke often of his interest in sharing the music making of the orchestra, but prison was a bit of a challenge for us. We took the challenge and developed a really special program. We chose to go to a juvenile Detention Center. Every week, every week, two members of our chorus go to the Illinois StateDetention Center in warrenville, working side by side with theater teaching artists developing stories and lyrics written by the girls, the inmates themselves. Their stories. Stories that are hard to tell, stories hard to hear. After four months of preparation like this, the cso compose you are and residence, also goes to the center for residency and works on developing songs for the girls, they write the tunes and she helps orchestrate it. These songs are then performed by members of the cso, who ultimately perform with the girls their original musical theater peace. The performances for the other girls in the center and all of their families. An incredibly powerful experience, telling the stories that are often unhold, hidden, locked away. You can imagine the powerful emotions that fill the library of that Detention Center. I have experienced it a couple of times as a guest. Some of those families have never heard their daughter or sister or niece or grand daughter communicate so directly. They didnt know that she had the power to share that story which is untold and therefore unknown. That hour of performance changed the lives of those girls, those families for me, forever. Thats what i mean by art for lifes sake. [ applause ] thank you. The followup activity that includes ricardo muti usually takes place after four to six months. I must say i was rather skeptical about his participation before i went to warrenville with him. He requested a piano, and the two singers, the chorusters, twice each year, he does this, he goes and spends about 90 minutes with about two dozen girls from the center. And you probably think this is just as crazy as i did, but in fact, performing opera areas, with the women that they knew so well was offering a mirror for these girls lives and an in inspiration, where else do you hear such stories . Opera. Somehow muti knew that and he nye exact knew exactly how to convey that to them, to have someone of that renowned care about two dozen girls in a Detention Center in a small town in illinois. Imagine what that means and imagine how that is so affirming in their lives. Art for lifes sake. At the Kennedy Center, we overflow in the sharing and telling of stories. You probably know all of the programs and so many of you i have met here today have told me about how you attend programs at the Kennedy Center. But i suspect there are a nib of programs that you dont know about, because i didnt know about them much and im paying pretty close attention and until i got here, i didnt know about them. So in addition to the daily free millennium stage performances, the six productions of the Washington National opera, the nearly 30 weeks of subscriptions and pop concerts of the national Symphony Orchestra, the extraordinary range of ball lay offerings, cutting edge dance and theater programs, blockbuster musical theater offerings, we produce and present so much at the Kennedy Center, but but also have perhaps the most extensive local and National Educational ufrings in the country. Im particularly interested in this for some personal reasons that my ron already told you about. But im still going to say them if its okay. So standing before you is the prub product of primarily a Public School education. In the third grade, my elementary schoolteacher opened the classroom cabinet and said what instrument will you play . Not the you wafbnt to play, but what will you play . And aam here today because i had the opportunity to find myself through music. He got the story right, didnt he . That teacher and that Public School gave me the first tools and the curiosity and the passion to find myself, to write my story here in the arts. I believe fervently that every child, every individual in this country deserves the find themselves, whether it is in academics, athletics or the arts. Arts education has been diminished to such a degree, that generations now have lost the opportunity for even a basic education in the arts in their school day, Arts Organizations across the country are desperately working to supplement program that do exist but there are just truly insufficient resources to ensure that all children have that experience in the classroom. The work we do through the Kennedy Centers Education Department supports teachers, students and families in their discovery of themselves through the arts and im enormously proud of these programs. As i said, i didnt know all of them before i came to the Kennedy Center and im still getting to know all of them because theyre so multitude nice. But i would like to share just some of the ones that i do know about with you now. Did you me that the Kennedy Center spends more than 1 million annually in its work with schools in the district of columbia, through such programs such as the d. C. Arts programs. Did you know that more than 35,000 teachers participated in 730 professional learning programs provided by the Kennedy Center . Were teaching teachers not just how to teach the arts, but how to use arts in the classroom to teach other subjects, such as math and science and history. Did you know that the Center Provides lesson plans, audio and video podcasts, student games and the how 20s for teachers to use the arts in their classrooms, and in this past years, more than 8 million interactio