WASHINGTON – On Monday night, President Donald Trump is welcoming the Kennedy Center’s leadership at the White House, highlighting his significant focus on transforming a major cultural institution as part of a broader plan to reshape the social and ideological landscape of the national arts community.
The Kennedy Center’s board is meeting in the State Dining Room following Trump’s dismissal of its former members and his announcement in February regarding his role as the board’s chair. The newly formed board, which unanimously chose Trump as its chair, consists of his supporters.
Included among the members are White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Usha Vance—wife of Vice President JD Vance—and Lee Greenwood, known for his song “God Bless the USA,” which is often featured at Trump rallies and official events, such as his recent trip to the Middle East.
Trump has called the center’s past programing “woke” and “terrible,” while more broadly seeking to slash federal funding for the arts — complaining that too much programing promotes leftist ideology and political correctness.
In the view of the Republican president and top leaders in his administration, molding the Kennedy Center to his own liking can go a long way toward creating a new arts and social culture nationwide.
The center has announced it is abandoning a week’s worth of July events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights as part of this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington.
The White House has further moved to cancel millions in previously awarded federal humanities grants awarded to arts and culture groups. And Trump’s budget framework has proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities altogether.
Trump visited the Kennedy Center in March to preside over a meeting of its board, and complained then of “tremendous disrepair” to the building while adding that the center “represents a very important part of D.C., and actually our country.”
The president has also expressed displeasure with a recent expansion of the complex, known as “The Reach,” which features studios, rehearsal spaces and meeting facilities, and he suggest he would move to close up the spaces because they lack windows.
In an aesthetic touch for the Trump era, meanwhile, the center’s exterior lighting has been changed to permanently display red, white, and blue.
The president’s changes drew pushback from a variety of artists.
The musical Hamilton responded to Trump’s hands-on approach by canceling performances it had planned in March and April. Other performers — including actress and producer Issa Rae and musician Rhiannon Giddens — have similarly scrapped planned appearances.
And with Trump planning to attend a performance of Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center on June 11, the show announced that many understudies may be performing then due to boycotts by cast members.
The political tension is a departure for the Kennedy Center, which opened in 1971 and for decades was seen as an apolitical celebration of the arts.
“What had once been a nonpartisan institution dedicated to the arts is now under the direct control of a president eager to impose his ideological vision, dictating artistic priorities at one of the nation’s most esteemed cultural landmarks,” Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus wrote in a recent op-ed.
Presidents typically nominate members of the Kennedy Center’s board in consultation with members of Congress. After that, they often don’t have a lot of contact with the center’s leadership, except to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors.
“You’re one of America’s most renowned living playwrights, and you’re still writing strong,” Republican President Ronald Reagan said in 1984, addressing Author Miller, who was among that year’s Kennedy Center honorees. It was an example of a Cold War commander in chief praising a writer who had well-known associations with communist-aligned groups.
In 2019, the center hosted an exhibit of former Republican President George W. Bush’s paintings.
Trump, who calls “Citizen Kane” one of his favorite movie and said he once considered studying film at the University of Southern California, mostly ignored the center during his first term. He became the first president to routinely skip attending the honors ceremony. But he didn’t didn’t retaliate when one honoree, producer Norman Lear, threatened not to attend if the president did.
In his second term, Trump has been far more aggressive and proactive — as he has on many policy and political fronts. He cited some drag show performances at the center as a reason to transform it entirely.
“Come here and watch it, and you’ll see, over a period of time, it’ll improve very greatly physically,” Trump said during his Kennedy Center visit in March. “And we’re going to get some very good shows.”
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Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed from New York.
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