{"id":578,"date":"2025-06-04T14:27:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T19:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/?p=578"},"modified":"2025-06-04T14:28:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T19:28:03","slug":"kennedy-center-audiences-vote-with-their-feet-what-happens-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/2025\/06\/04\/kennedy-center-audiences-vote-with-their-feet-what-happens-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy Center audiences vote with their feet. What happens next?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll.jpg?resize=300%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Photo of the Kennedy Center at dusk with Pride lights glowing\" class=\"wp-image-580\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Photo by Mike  Stoll from Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Boycotting is alive and well as a protest tactic. Based on ticket sales figures leaked to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/theater\/2025\/06\/03\/kennedy-center-subscription-sales-decline\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Washington Post<\/a>, Kennedy Center audiences are voting with their feet and staying away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sales appear to be cratering. Here&#8217;s the damage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Single ticket sales down 50% in April and May as compared to last year<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Theater subscriptions are down an eye-popping 82%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dance subscriptions are down 57%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Subscriptions for performances for young people are down 82%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The Center\u2019s constituent arts organizations are suffering as well, with the National Symphony Orchestra\u2019s subscriptions down 28% and the Washington National Opera down 25%. It\u2019s just two weeks into the subscription campaign, but the staffer who provided the documents to The Washington Post said they thought it would be nigh impossible to reach last year\u2019s numbers with this kind of start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results aren\u2019t surprising, considering that the Center&#8217;s audience is made up mostly of people from Washington D.C. (<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/projects\/election-results-2024\/district-of-columbia\/?r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">where 92% of votes<\/a> went to VP Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential election) and surrounding areas. Much of the audience likely works for the federal government or an adjacent industry and President Trump&#8217;s takeover of the Center violates values they hold dear. (Just read the comments on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KennedyCenter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kennedy Center&#8217;s Facebook page<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Any normal arts leaders would be in emergency mode if this was happening at their organization. <strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-theme-primary-color\">But for the current Kennedy Center leadership, any sales figures are a political win-win<\/mark>.<\/strong> If sales hold steady or increase, they can say they have the support of the people. If sales decline, they can point to it as evidence that liberals are intolerant and claim the Kennedy Center is a victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But here\u2019s an outcome that gives me a pit in my stomach: <strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-theme-primary-color\">a severe drop off in audience used as a pretext to close the Kennedy Center temporarily or slow programming to a crawl.<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s how that might work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Scenario 1:<\/em> President Trump has been vocal about what he thinks is significant disrepair of the facilities and has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/05\/13\/nx-s1-5395839\/the-white-house-is-pushing-a-big-budget-increase-for-the-kennedy-center\">requested $257 million from Congress for the building<\/a>. If that money is allocated, they could close most or all of the Center for repairs, go down to a skeleton staff, and halt all or most public programming. That could last the rest of the administration and into the next. Or if they do start up again, they have a clean slate for programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Scenario 2: <\/em>If the money for renovation isn\u2019t granted, they could use the rapid evaporation of the audience as an excuse to slash programs even further, just like has been done across the federal government as agencies have been reduced to minimal operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I hope I&#8217;m being paranoid.<\/em> An argument against these doomsday scenarios is that the Kennedy Center is a platform for President Trump and his political allies to grandstand and stoke the culture wars they&#8217;ve created. That might be incentive enough to keep it running. But it might become just too much trouble as they learn what every reader of ArtsJournal knows: <em>running an arts organization is hard<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a shame that most Republican leaders consider diversity as divisive. The approach of the Kennedy Center\u2019s programming was to showcase the excellence of American artists that reflected the range of art forms we practice here, from classical music and ballet to contemporary jazz, pop, comedy and theater. Further, the Center was respected in the arts community for lifting up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennedy-center.org\/whats-on\/explore-by-genre\/hip-hop\/culture-council\/\">hip-hop as an art form<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennedy-center.org\/education\/networks-conferences-and-research\/research-and-resources\/lead-research-and-resources\/\">offering professional development around access for people with disabilities<\/a>. In the children&#8217;s theater world, in which I worked for a few years, the Kennedy Center is known for their leadership on championing high quality theater for young audiences, which is often dismissed as fluff but we know is powerful and inventive for participants and audiences alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-theme-primary-color\">A hollowed-out Kennedy Center might be a political win-win for MAGA supporters, but it\u2019s lose-lose for audiences and the country. <\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not too soon for arts leaders, artists, community and political leaders, and audiences to start articulating a post-Trump vision for the arts. Give the audiences and arts supporters a clear picture of how the sector will recover after the decimation of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Kennedy Center, National Parks, and whatever might happen to the Smithsonian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-theme-primary-color\">President Trump and Mr. Grennell are not holding back on pushing their vision for the arts. Why should we?<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kennedy Center subscription sales are in free fall. How much danger does that put the Center in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,123,139,12],"tags":[197,189,196,198,191,193,192,194,199],"class_list":{"0":"post-578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advocacy","8":"category-arts-funding","9":"category-marketing","10":"category-strategy","11":"tag-congress","12":"tag-kennedy-center","13":"tag-maga","14":"tag-national-symphony-orchestra","15":"tag-ric-grennell","16":"tag-subscriptions","17":"tag-the-washington-post","18":"tag-ticket-sales","19":"tag-washington-national-opera","20":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Kennedy-Center-Pride-Lights-Mike-Stoll-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-9k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}