“Sesame Street,” which is celebrating 50 years on the air this year, will also receive an award, making it the second time the Kennedy Center is bestowing the honor on a work of art rather than an individual. (“Hamilton,” recognized last year, was the first.) It is the first honor bestowed to a television program, the center said.
“We started thinking about what it would be like here in this 50th anniversary year for ‘Sesame Street,’ and it was a runaway hit with the selection committee,” Deborah Rutter, the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, said in an interview. “It really felt right to do this for ‘Sesame Street.’”
The gala, to be held on Dec. 8, is an annual high point for Washington and the cultural community. But what has historically been a nonpartisan event since the first honors were doled out in 1978 has taken on a tinge of today’s political tensions in the past two years, with President Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, breaking ranks with their predecessors in deciding not to attend.
It’s too early for the Trumps to know if they will go this year, Rutter said. While presidents had missed the gala on rare occasions before — three times in the honors’ 40-year history — the Trumps’ absence in 2017 was the first time both the president and first lady decided to skip. Because the Kennedy Center Honors is such a “sought-after event,” Rutter added, she has not seen any change in ticket sales for the gala, which is the center’s key fundraiser.
While the 2017 honorees were vocal about reconsidering their participation in Kennedy Center Honors events because of the possibility that Trump would attend, some of this year’s artists think he may not make it to the gala this year, anyway. Tilson Thomas, for one, said in an interview that it’s “such an unlikely occurrence” that the president would show up that he hasn’t thought much about whether it would affect his own attendance.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.