Deborah F. Rutter – Chautauqua Lecture Series

Deborah F. Rutter is an internationally respected nonprofit executive with nearly five decades of leadership at premier cultural institutions. From 2014 to 2025, she served as the first female president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — the nation’s preeminent cultural center — where she led a period of transformative growth while centering artists in all aspects of the institution’s work.

She joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to close a week exploring “Art in Action: Building Community Through the Arts,” by considering what it means to uplift the arts through the work and investment of a cultural center for all of America and all of her peoples.