Uploaded January 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Philip Kennicott is the chief Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. Kennicott won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Philip Kennicott: “In the past half century, the United States has developed an increasingly professionalized arts industry. The origins of the current system are often attributed to the administration of John F. Kennedy, but much of the cultural “infrastructure” now in place dates back to the Johnson Administration, which championed the democratization of the arts and wide dissemination of cultural resources. This talk will examine in particular the emergence of an idea that has taken hold throughout the performing arts: The Artist as Citizen. It marks the triumph of the hidden hand of Lyndon Johnson in defining a role for American artists. Has anything been lost in this development? At risk are things Kennedy saw as fundamental to the artist’s purpose in a democracy: Radical independence and contrarian insight.”
Presented by the Program on Constitutional Government on November 3, 2017.
Philip Kennicott is the chief Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. Kennicott won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Philip Kennicott: “In the past half century, the United States has developed an increasingly professionalized arts industry. The origins of the current system are often attributed to the administration of John F. Kennedy, but much of the cultural “infrastructure” now in place dates back to the Johnson Administration, which championed the democratization of the arts and wide dissemination of cultural resources. This talk will examine in particular the emergence of an idea that has taken hold throughout the performing arts: The Artist as Citizen. It marks the triumph of the hidden hand of Lyndon Johnson in defining a role for American artists. Has anything been lost in this development? At risk are things Kennedy saw as fundamental to the artist’s purpose in a democracy: Radical independence and contrarian insight.”
Presented by the Program on Constitutional Government on November 3, 2017.
