The Kennedy Center Is Closing. Where Does Culture Go Now?
- Tour de Force Foundation
- Aug 21
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
The Spark August 2026
The Kennedy Center’s two-year closure is sending the National Symphony across the DMV. From the Phillips Collection to Baltimore skateboard decks, this August Spark asks what happens when the cultural map starts moving.
One of Washington’s most recognizable cultural landmarks is preparing to close its doors for two years. The Kennedy Center closing has become a moment that reveals how a city’s cultural life moves, adapts and finds new spaces. The Kennedy Center’s board has approved a major renovation, sending performances long identified with the building out into the wider region. For the National Symphony Orchestra, that means an unusually dispersed 2026–27 season across six venues in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
What the Kennedy Center Closing Means for Washington’s Cultural Life
Music director Gianandrea Noseda has described the NSO’s coming season as that of a “regional touring orchestra.” Instead of asking audiences to gather at one monumental building on the Potomac, the orchestra will move between neighborhoods and jurisdictions. For at least one season, the cultural map shifts.
And it isn’t the only place that map is moving. At the Phillips Collection, Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise brings together 48 artists from DC, Maryland and Virginia, selected from 1,500 submissions.
Elsewhere across the DMV, new public-art projects, cultural planning and exhibitions in everyday community spaces are asking similar questions about where culture happens, who encounters it and who gets to shape it.
But cultural movement doesn’t only happen when major institutions change where they present their work. Sometimes it happens on a much smaller scale: when an artist puts a new surface into someone’s hands and asks what they might make of it.
This is where this month’s TDF grantee enters the story.
In Baltimore, Sanah Brown-Bowers’s Get on Deck with Purpose began with blank skateboard decks. Young participants used paint, collage and visual storytelling to turn them into personal vision boards, thinking about identity, goals and the futures they want to imagine.
If the wider DMV cultural map is moving, Sanah’s project brings that movement down to the scale of one person: a blank deck, a set of choices, and the question of where you want to go next.
In Focus
Sanah Brown-Bowers / Get on Deck with Purpose
August 2026 Grantee
A blank skateboard deck is a vehicle for possibility. It’s an object built for movement, but before it goes anywhere, it can also become a surface for deciding where you’d like to go.
On July 31, artist Sanah Brown-Bowers brought young people aged 10–18 together in Baltimore for Get on Deck with Purpose, a full-day workshop created with Northwest Wellness Project.
Participants began with blank decks and built them up using spray paint, collage, images, words and visual storytelling. They were asked to think about who they are, what matters to them and what they’d like their futures to hold. Images connected to music, sport, careers, education, neighborhood life and popular culture became part of personal visual narratives, layered directly onto the wood.
Artists Sanah Brown-Bowers and Reginal Bowers led the artistic process, with Akewi Barnes and Calvin Croxton providing additional mentorship and hands-on support. The day also included guided conversations around identity, self-worth, goal-setting and the choices young people make as they imagine what comes next. It ended with a gallery-style presentation, where participants could share their finished decks and talk about the thinking behind them.
TDF’s support went toward the practical things a day like this needs: art materials and skateboard decks, printed collage resources, transportation, meals and refreshments, and honoraria for the four teaching artists.
For Sanah, that practical work sits inside a much bigger purpose. She describes her own Tour de Force as:
“creating opportunities that inspire hope, healing, and self-expression through art.”
In Baltimore that day, the future didn’t arrive as an abstract idea. It was cut out, painted, rearranged, glued down — and carried home on a skateboard deck.
From hands-on creativity in Greenbelt to an exhibition opening in Baltimore and a giant game day in downtown DC, here are three things happening this month from organisations and artists in the TDF community.
What’s On
Golden Hour: Creative Evenings at The SPACE
August 26 or 28 · 6–8pm · Greenbelt, MD · Tickets from $40
The SPACE Free Art For All, a 2022 TDF grantee, is running Golden Hour, a new series of hands-on creative evenings supporting its free and accessible arts programming. On August 26 or 28, founder Shaymar Higgs leads a jewelry-making session where participants can create their own wearable piece. No experience needed.
What’s On
DEVOTED at MICA
August 28–October 11 · Decker Gallery, Baltimore · Free
MICA, a repeat TDF grantee, brings together 29 women artists for DEVOTED: 20 Years of The McMillan-Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting. The exhibition includes artists who’ve built lasting connections with MICA, including Saya Woolfalk, whose 2025 visit to the school was supported by TDF. A public reception takes place September 10 from 5–7pm.
What’s On
Game Day at Anthem Row
Sunday, August 30 · 2–7pm · Downtown DC · Free
Scrabble, chess, Spades, dominoes, Mahjong, hip-hop trivia, video games and a whole downtown street turned into a giant game room. Words Beats & Life, TDF’s June 2026 grantee, is bringing the games, music and friendly neighborhood rivalry. Registration’s required.
For Makers And Educators
Got an idea? TDF grants are open.
If you’re a DMV-based artist or educator with a short-term creative project that brings people into the work, TDF’s grant portal is open.
Grants range from $500 to $2,000 and applications are accepted on a rolling basis. TDF prioritizes projects with clear educational, hands-on or community-engagement components, and funded projects need to take place within four months of the grant date.
Give
A skateboard deck, art materials, transport, teaching time, a place to gather: creative projects need practical things before they can happen.
If you’d like to help TDF keep putting those things within reach of artists and educators across the DMV, you can support the Foundation through its Fractured Atlas donation page.
Join the conversation
What space in your neighborhood could become a cultural space?
We’d love to hear what you’re imagining.
Comment in the comments section at the bottom of this post.
Enjoying stories from the Tour de Force community?
Share The Spark with an artist, educator or curious person who might enjoy it.
Comments