Deborah Rutter Will Succeed Michael Kaiser Deborah F. Rutter, who as president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra helped it navigate the financial shoals that have sunk other orchestras, will become the president of the Kennedy Center next fall, the center announced on Tuesday. Ms. Rutter, 57, will succeed Michael M. Kaiser, who, after 13 years as president, is leaving in September. He will move with the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, which he founded at the center in 2001, to the University of Maryland. Ms. Rutter will be the first female president of the center, which opened in 1971. During her decade in Chicago, Ms. Rutter led the orchestra through trying financial times, including a strike by musicians in 2012. But the orchestra survived when others cut back or closed, and she won wide praise for luring the charismatic maestro Riccardo Muti, who became music director there in 2010. "She has the universal respect of people in the industry," said David M. Rubenstein, the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, who led the search committee with Anthony Welters, another trustee. Just two years ago, Ms. Rutter insisted that she had no interest in leaving the Chicago Symphony when her name came up as a possible successor to Zarin Mehta as president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic. But now Ms. Rutter said that she would be leaving the orchestra on solid ground and that the timing seemed right. "It's been 10-plus years," she said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. I'd rather leave and have people say what a great job she did, rather than say she stayed too long. The Kennedy Center is a considerably bigger operation than the Chicago Symphony, with an operating budget of nearly $190 million, as opposed to the Chicago Symphony's $75 million. As the artistic and administrative director of the Kennedy Center, Ms. Rutter will oversee theater, dance, ballet, chamber music and jazz, as well as the center's affiliates, the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. In 2011, the financially troubled opera merged its administrative functions with those of the Kennedy Center. The center's arts education programs reach millions of people and include VSA, the international organization on arts and disability. Moreover, Ms. Rutter is stepping into big shoes. Under Mr. Kaiser, the Kennedy Center stepped up its ambitions and profile. Donations more than doubled during his tenure, and the center runs a surplus every year. Ms. Rutter is also inheriting an ambitious $100 million renovation plan, designed by Steven Holl, that will give the Kennedy Center new education and rehearsal space and reorient the building toward the Potomac. Construction is expected to begin late next year and to be completed on May 29, 2017, the 100th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's birth. The center is raising an additional $25 million for programming. Mr. Rubenstein donated half the $100 million for the renovation; the rest is being raised from other donors. In his three years as chairman, Mr. Rubenstein has emphasized the importance of institutional self-reliance, saying that the government cannot do as much as it once did. Indeed, the Kennedy Center once had a more extensive $650 million redevelopment plan that relied on $400 million in projected federal funding, but it was scrapped after Congress balked in 2005. Because the center is a national monument to President Kennedy, 12 members of Congress sit on the board. Ms. Rutter said she was undaunted by the scale of the center or its dependence on private support. "It is our responsibility to nurture the relationship with our audience," she said, "so that we forever have significant funding, whether from ticket sales or contributions, that's coming from the people." She has also had experience with capital projects; during her 11 years as executive director of the Seattle Symphony, she oversaw the construction of Benaroya Hall, the orchestra's home in downtown Seattle, which opened in 1998. At the Chicago Symphony, Ms. Rutter earned admiration in the classical music world for recruiting Mr. Muti to replace Daniel Barenboim as the orchestra's music director. Mr. Muti accepted the position after a two-week stint as a guest conductor in Chicago, followed by a two-week European tour with the orchestra. His appointment was a major score for Ms. Rutter, since the New York Philharmonic also wanted him. "Music directors of his caliber have a lot of choice in terms of where they go," said Jesse Rosen, president and chief executive of the League of American Orchestras, "and she was able to reel him in." It hasn't all been smooth sailing, however. Mr. Muti missed two weeks of his inaugural season, for example, because of stomach pains caused by what he later said was exhaustion and stress. Still, he has been a major attraction, drawing 100,000 people in October to the orchestra's performance of Verdi's Requiem through live simulcast and Internet streaming. Ms. Rutter also named the cellist Yo-Yo Ma as the symphony's first creative consultant in 2010. Working with Mr. Ma, the Chicago Symphony in 2011 established the Citizen Musician initiative, which uses music as a form of public service, through free performances and teaching. "Service is very much part of Deborah's vocabulary," Mr. Ma said by phone. We want to make sure all of the country is included in all the work that we do.