Public Commissions
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Scrollathon: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
2022
Commissioned by: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.
Medium: Fiber, ink, metal, wood, glue
Dimensions: 20 × 4 ft × 2 in. (Collaborative Masterwork); Signature Plates, each 8½ × 11 in.
Photograph: Courtesy of the artists
Created in: Washington, D.C.
Artists’ Registration Numbers:
Collaborative Masterworks: 2019.046.001–2019.046.081
Signature Plates: 2019.046.082–2019.046.085
Mini Portrait Mural: 2022.183.001
Portrait Mural: Registration forthcoming
Exhibition History: The REACH Opening Festival, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., 2019.
We shared three dreams: to create a permanent artwork for the Kennedy Center, to take Scrollathon to a national level, and to use it as a vehicle for lasting impact on America. They told us to put those dreams on paper—and to be patient.
Two years later, the call came. The Kennedy Center invited us to realize the first dream: a permanent community-built artwork to inaugurate The REACH. That commission not only fulfilled one dream but set into motion the next—the birth of the National Scrollathon, which would later become America’s Cultural Project for the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Commission Overview
Commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to celebrate the opening of The REACH, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow brought together 750 participants across Washington, D.C., to create a permanent Collaborative Masterwork installed in the River Pavilion.
The project was the result of a multi-year dialogue with the Kennedy Center’s leadership that began in 2017 with a simple but profound question: What are your dreams? During a day-long conversation on-site, the Center’s team encouraged us to imagine the biggest possibilities for Scrollathon.
Artistic Approach
Over the course of two weeks in September 2019, Steven and William Ladd led Scrollathon workshops both on-site at The REACH and throughout Washington, D.C., inviting hundreds of participants to take part in a shared act of making. Each individual scroll was constructed from two fabric trimmings selected by the participant and tightly wrapped around a small wooden dowel. Once formed, the scrolls were secured by hand and marked with ink—sometimes through detailed miniature drawings, sometimes with a single symbol, name, or gesture—each one carrying a personal narrative.
Engagement and Impact
Participants represented an extraordinary cross-section of Washington, D.C., including students, educators, seniors, and practicing artists. Community partners such as Anacostia High School, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, Hearst Elementary School, Seaton Elementary School, and Sitar Arts Center brought diverse voices and lived experiences into the process, ensuring the work reflected the city’s breadth and vitality.
Thousands of these hand-rolled scrolls were brought together to form a radiant, twenty-foot-long Collaborative Masterwork. Installed in the River Pavilion, the composition unfolds as a dense field of color, rhythm, and repetition, subtly echoing the movement of the Potomac River just beyond the glass. The title, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, speaks to the temporal layering embedded in the work—individual histories meeting in the present moment to form a shared vision of continuity, possibility, and collective creativity.
Through the shared act of making, participants experienced how modest, repetitive gestures—rolling, securing, and marking a scroll—could accumulate into something expansive and enduring. The project reinforced a central tenet of Scrollathon: that every individual possesses creative agency, and that when people create together, personal expression becomes collective authorship. Installed permanently at The REACH, the work continues to stand as both a record of participation and a living testament to the power of collaboration at a civic scale.
She responded simply that it would be the perfect undertaking for the Semiquincentennial. With that affirmation, the National Scrollathon came into focus, realizing a vision first articulated during our early conversations with the Kennedy Center years earlier.
What began as a single collaborative artwork in Washington, D.C. has since grown into a nationwide initiative, uniting communities across all 50 states, five U.S. territories, and the nation’s capital. Rooted in the spirit of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the National Scrollathon carries forward the belief that shared making can foster empathy, connection, and a collective sense of belonging—principles first articulated, and permanently embodied, at The REACH.
Context and Legacy
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow marked a pivotal moment in our practice and in the evolution of Scrollathon: the first major institutional commission of the project at a national arts center. Permanently installed in The REACH, the work continues to welcome thousands of visitors each year, standing as both a record of collective participation and a civic-scale expression of art’s unifying potential.
At the closing celebration for the installation, Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter asked what we hoped to pursue next. We shared a long-held ambition: to expand Scrollathon into a truly national project.
Community Groups
Anacostia High School; BloomBars; Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington (Jelleff Club, Richard England Clubhouse 14); Brightwood Education Campus; Columbia Heights Educational Campus; Forest Side Memory Care – Forest Hills of DC; Hearst Elementary School; Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School; Noyes Elementary School; Ross Elementary School; School Without Walls High School; Seaton Elementary School; Sitar Arts Center
Sponsors
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Tom Ladd; Tom and Lisa Carnahan; Beth Rudin DeWoody; Ivan Wong
Special Thanks
Alexandra Stanton;; Deborah F. Rutter; Mario Rossero
Acknowledgments
The Scrollathon team; National Scrollathon Interns and Fellows, Charles and Barbara Ladd