Last June I wrote here on this blog that President Trump and the leaders he installed at the Kennedy Center might temporarily close the Center using the excuse of renovations, when the real reason for closing or pausing programming would be in response to the embarrassment of cratering sales due to protesting audiences.
Tonight, President Trump announced that he was doing just what I feared: closing the Kennedy Center for 2 years for renovations.
When I wrote my post, I thought was a pretty unlikely possibility – and I don’t like being right that it has come to pass.
But it was predictable because it is in line with the political and rhetorical strategy that President Trump has always been known for: shift blame, distract, and confuse us all so we no longer know what the real issue is.
The actual problem is not that renovations would be too disruptive, it’s that audiences are not coming to the Kennedy Center as a form of protest, artists are pulling out (the heaviest of hitters, like Renee Fleming and Philip Glass) – whole COMPANIES whose business model relied on being at the Kennedy Center can’t stomach being there anymore (Washington National Opera) – long time staff are quitting, newly hired staff aren’t staying, and the people that are on staff clearly don’t know how to run an arts organization (No, shows don’t pay for themselves at nonprofit arts companies – that’s not a bug, it’s a feature).
The Kennedy Center matters because it is symbolic, infrastructural, and cumulative in a way few cultural institutions in our decentralized country are. It is one of the rare places where artistic excellence, national identity, public funding, and audience trust intersect at scale. It matters because it’s located in our capitol where we all go when we want to learn and reflect on our nation and its history.
For decades, it has quietly done the unglamorous work of building habits. Going to the Kennedy Center taught millions of people what it means to be an arts participant at all.
–> Imagine a political staffer who moved to DC from somewhere that didn’t have a big arts scene and once in the city started to go out to see music and dance and theater and it enriched their lives in their adopted city.
–> Imagine the arts fan who has going to the Kennedy Center on their bucket list and finally goes one evening after a day visiting monuments and the Air & Space Museum.
–> Imagine the thrill of being a high schooler from a corner of the country and getting to perform as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
When audiences stop showing up there, it is not just a boycott or a blip in ticket sales. It is a rupture in one of the country’s most important civic pathways for the arts. Hollowing out the Kennedy Center does not create space for something better to emerge; it weakens the entire ecosystem by signaling that shared cultural institutions are disposable.
If we care about audience confidence, cultural continuity, and the idea that the arts are part of public life rather than a lifestyle choice for a few, then the Kennedy Center still matters. What happens there reverberates far beyond its walls.
Stay tuned – I’ll keep writing about this. What do you think? Comments are open.
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