Appointment recognizes Supervisor Solis’ longstanding commitment to building diversity, equity, and inclusion into arts sector infrastructure, and ensuring access to arts resources in historically underserved communities
President Joseph R. Biden has appointed Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis to the Board of Trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center, the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, is this country’s national cultural center — as a presenter, it hosts world-class performing arts that are made available to the broadest possible constituencies, and as an agency, it delivers powerful arts education opportunities nationwide.
Supervisor Solis is President Biden’s first Kennedy Center appointment – a recognition of her long standing advocacy for underserved communities and people of color. Solis has fought for equitable resources for these groups in many sectors, including environmental justice, community building, public safety, housing, workforce development and arts and culture. She co-authored the resolution that directed the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture to release its 2017 Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII), which set out strategies for ensuring people in LA County have equitable access to arts and culture, and improve inclusion in the wider arts ecology for all residents, in every community. CEII directs these outcomes so that everyone can participate in the benefits the arts provide — personal and community resiliency, positive education outcomes and career opportunities in the creative economy. The Kennedy Center, likewise, is steeped in this work on a national level. It works to foster anti-racism across the performing arts field and through its social impact initiatives, leverages arts for non-arts outcomes.