That’s what Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter is doing, and Midgette “understand[s] the instinct. The performing arts have increasingly devolved into a field in which artists become cogs in a machine operated by other people, from managers and programmers through to stage directors and conductors. … Putting artists in the driver’s seat may seem like an ideal corrective. But bringing artists in as programmers, in capacities they’re not trained in, doesn’t necessarily alter the current model. Indeed, it may reaffirm it.”