recorded January 12, 2021
An Afternoon with David Rubenstein and Deborah Rutter
The Walter S. Gubelmann Memorial Lecture
David Rubenstein is Chairman of both the Smithsonian Institution and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Noted philanthropist (including the giant panda complex at the National Zoo, the Washington Memorial, the National Gallery of Art, and now the Lincoln Memorial), he is also a TV host, and perhaps above all a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group. He has recently become a guru on leadership with his best-selling book How to Lead (2020). The Society of the Four Arts is grateful to David Rubenstein for the loan, from his collection of Americana, of the early Bibles and historic documents in the exhibition In God We Trust.
Deborah Rutter, with an accomplished career in music as well as an MBA, is the president of the Kennedy Center and the first woman to have this position. She has emerged as one of the nation’s most adroit leaders in the arts, combining artistic daring with inclusivity, and responsiveness to the needs of the community. In her first year at the Kennedy Center, Deborah Rutter broke ground on an arts facility, the REACH, designed by Steven Holl, which provides flexible indoor and outdoor performance space to nurture new art, innovation, arts education, and informal encounters between the artist and the public.