At the Kennedy Center, a ceiling gave way during a rainstorm, and in doing so, it gave way to something larger — a contest over memory, stewardship, and the meaning of public institutions. The fifty-year-old performing arts landmark, long deferred in its maintenance, now stands at the center of a legal and political struggle over who will restore it, what it will be called, and whose legacy it will carry. What crumbled was not only plaster, but the pretense that infrastructure and ambition can be cleanly separated.