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During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, he didn’t even show up to the Kennedy Center Honors. He felt slighted by the performers, so he shunned the event at the famed John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In his second term, Trump has tried to remake the cultural center in his MAGA image. Trump “was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige,” Katy Waldman wrote for The New Yorker in December, but “he and his allies made it radioactive.”
That’s why I’d categorize Trump’s Sunday night announcement about closing the building for a two-year renovation as shocking but not surprising.
It did come as a shock: staff found out “via the president’s social media post,” CNN’s Donald Judd reported. But “there had been talk within the organization of a temporary closure at the end of the fiscal year — nominally for ‘renovations’ but also to stem the financial bleed affecting the institution amid the backlash from artists.”
Indeed, the numbers tell the story. “In the past year, sales of subscription packages and tickets have fallen dramatically,” The Washington Post reported Monday. “Empty seats became a common sight at the center.”
Equally telling: The sheer length of an NPR article titled “Here’s who’s canceled their Kennedy Center performances since Trump took over.”
Trump’s involvement has been a turnoff to many arts patrons, even as he and his allies have portrayed the president as the venue’s long-needed savior.
The flood of performer cancellations accelerated after Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board members voted to add his name to the institution last December.dann
Trump was at the center just last week for the premiere of his wife’s documentary film “Melania.”
So now we’re left wondering, as this Vulture headline asks, “Is Trump going to tear down the Kennedy Center?” Will members of the Kennedy family try to stop him?
On “CNN This Morning,” Audie Cornish said the rebuilding plan reprises a question related to Trump’s East Wing demolition: “Is this a person who’s renovating because he’s not leaving, or is this a person renovating because everywhere he sees a potential real estate project?”
Despite the recent surge in cancellations, a significant number of events are still slated at the performing arts center. The building is home to the National Symphony Orchestra, which performs multiple times per week during its active season. Regular performances of “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Outsider” musicals are still on the calendar.
“If any forethought was given to the livelihood of the musicians who perform regularly in the Kennedy Center, no mention of it was made in the president’s statement,” Charles T. Downey of the Washington Classical Review wrote on Sunday night.
The Washington Post noted, “It was not immediately clear what the closure would mean for annual events held at the center such as the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor or the Kennedy Center Honors.” Trump’s new East Wing ballroom is not expected to be ready in time.
While short on answers about the impacts, Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, a vocal Trump loyalist, tweeted Sunday night that “this will be a brief closure in retrospect — and I am confident this sets the stage for a stronger, revitalized National Cultural and Entertainment Complex.”
While Trump insists this is about fixing a “dilapidated” building, “it’s not the decor that has driven performers away. It’s the decorator,” David Axelrod remarked on X.
“Just like his casinos and other businesses, the Kennedy Center went out of business after he put his name on it,” Brett Meiselas, co-founder of the progressive outlet MeidasTouch, wrote.
“Instead of allowing the Center to return to its arts mission, he’d rather close it than admit his vanity project was rejected by the American people,” former GOP lawmaker Barbara Comstock wrote.
