Washington Classical Review

When President Trump conducted a partisan takeover of the Kennedy Center last year, whether he knew it or not, he began the process of destroying the performing arts center.

Since its founding, the institution had been preserved largely above the political fray through many presidential terms, including Trump’s first one. Almost immediately following the takeover, musicians began to resign from their positions at the center and cancel performances there. Over the past year, hardly a week went by without more bad news about artists withdrawing from the city’s leading arts venue.

President Trump and the man he appointed to oversee the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, continued to insist that their aim was to heal the Kennedy Center and lift it up. As recently as January 6, Trump touted his efforts in that direction on social media: “I have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to make it the best Performing Arts Center anywhere in the World. A year ago it was in a state of financial and physical collapse.” Just wait and see, he promised, the Kennedy Center would rise from the ashes in a year.

The rankling over the politicization of the Kennedy Center began long before the inexplicable decision to add Trump’s name to the institution’s title in December. The renaming, which is likely illegal, has poured fuel on the Kennedy Center’s self-immolation. Trump’s abrasive approach has made the venerable arts institution poison to the very musicians he needs to perform there.

Faced with embarrassing news week after week, Trump unilaterally declared earlier this month that he will close the Kennedy Center to all performances and other events as of July 4, 2026. Although he initially implied that he would tear down the building and replace it with something completely new, he has since clarified that the steel framework of the building will remain in place.

The National Symphony Orchestra, which had been given no advance notice of the impending closure, has been scrambling to find alternative venues for its performances, the planning for which has often been years in the making. The closing of the Kennedy Center will only increase the likelihood of the center’s ultimate demise, which President Trump and his allies claim they are trying to avoid.

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress should begin pressuring President Trump to save the Kennedy Center by the only means possible: Trump must resign as chairman of the board and appoint a person with actual arts expertise to replace Richard Grenell as KC president. Furthermore, the plan to close the center should be tabled immediately.

A new president, in concert with the leadership of the NSO and the chamber music, dance, and theater leadership, should instead establish together what is actually needed to refurbish the building. Some dated decorative elements could be refreshed; a thorough assessment of the building’s rodent infestation is long overdue; an acoustic overhaul of the Concert Hall would certainly be welcome. The last plan could be accomplished without needing to relocate the NSO outside the Kennedy Center.

Most importantly, the Kennedy Center must be realigned with the stated goals of its founding charter. The aims of Congress in establishing a national performing arts center did not envision its use for the president’s VIP screenings of personal documentaries, for overtly political events, or for sports-related PR gatherings. The White House’s hosting of such events over the past year has encroached on the designated function of the Kennedy Center, as a venue for the performing arts, such as the National Symphony Orchestra.

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Trump, a show business man at heart, must see that imposing his will on the Kennedy Center has brought nothing but chaos. In January came more terrible news for classical music fans. The Washington National Opera board voted to end the affiliation agreement, signed in 2011, through which the Kennedy Center had rescued the opera company from almost certain bankruptcy. Happily, WNO has since announced it will mount its two March productions at Lisner Auditorium, where the company hosted its first performances 70 years ago.

Although WNO claimed to have initiated this institutional divorce, KC president Richard Grenell countered that the Kennedy Center had ousted the company in an effort to support the “financial stability” of the center. Speculation about the split ramped up when WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello broadcast the idea in public comments to a reporter last November. Conveniently enough, the two grand operas on the WNO season were completed in the KC Opera House last fall, prior to the fallout.

Reasons for the breakup abound. WNO has cited the reduction of centralized support services previously provided by the KC, amid widespread (and genuinely needed) staffing cuts at the center. For his part, Grenell has critiqued WNO for producing operas that appeal to limited audiences, resulting in his demand that all productions must be funded in advance, an impossible burden for an art form that requires creative financing mostly impossible to cover with conventional budgeting.

Although neither side has been particularly open about the question of KC control over programming, WNO did state that among their reasons to leave was KC leadership’s refusal to admit the need to balance “popular works with lesser-known operas that serve diverse audiences.” Sizable declines in both ticket sales and donations, according to Zambello, made the company’s future in its former home almost impossible in terms of financial survival.

Last March, WNO had to make a change to its new season when Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce withdrew Fellow Travelers, an opera set in the 1950s about two men working for the government who become lovers. In a letter, the opera’s creators claimed the takeover at the Kennedy Center ran counter to the values of “freedom and liberty for all people” that are highlighted in the opera.

WNO made the ingenious decision to replace the withdrawn opera with a new production of Robert Ward’s The Crucible, which won its composer the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1962. The opera is based on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play of the same name, which used the Salem Witch Trials as a lens to critique the government-sponsored attacks on American citizens, artists among them, for their political views during the McCarthy era.

Like most divorces, the split has been financially messy. The KC Opera House Orchestra, which accompanies WNO productions, must now exist under joint custody. As the WNO Orchestra, it will play for WNO productions, and under a separate contract as the “Trump Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra,” it will accompany groups like American Ballet Theater when they come to the Kennedy Center this week. (Unlike the NSO, the Opera House Orchestra has not received the same media attention: ballet fans should go to their productions to support the dancers and the Kennedy Center’s “other orchestra.”)

Another delicate matter is WNO’s $30 million endowment, technically under KC control, a matter that will require legal assistance to unravel.

The Kennedy Center charter specifically requires the maintenance of a venue, the Opera House, for the performance of opera. The new leader of the Kennedy Center should immediately begin negotiations with Washington National Opera to bring its largest productions back to the Kennedy Center Opera House. Given that the two entities are now separate, WNO would have to pay rent, which would bring some much-needed capital to the Kennedy Center.

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The news of WNO’s departure from the Kennedy Center sparked a wave of further defections. In January, Vocal Arts DC became the latest outside presenter to move its season’s remaining performances to other venues. The annual concert marking Martin Luther King, Jr. Day decamped to another venue. The Martha Graham Dance Company canceled its performances at the Kennedy Center in April. Soprano Renée Fleming, who had already resigned as a KC artistic adviser last year, canceled appearances with the NSO in May. The Brentano Quartet and violist Hsin-Yun Huang canceled their February 1 concert, “owing to the recent changes” at the Kennedy Center, as stated on their website.

The biggest shoe to fall was esteemed American composer Philip Glass, who informed the NSO that he would not allow the world premiere of his Fifteenth Symphony to take place at the KC. In his letter, simultaneously released to the media, Glass noted that the symphony is based on Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address: “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the symphony.”

Perhaps the most embarrassing failure came last month, with the announcement that a drummer named Kevin Couch would step into the role of Senior Vice President of Artistic Planning. “We are proud to welcome Kevin Couch to the Trump Kennedy Center as we expand our commonsense programming,” said Grenell. “Kevin brings a clear-eyed approach to curating a roster of compelling shows that invite and inspire all audiences.”

Although he had claimed to be honored by the opportunity, Couch resigned within a matter of days. The closure announcement surprised him as well. “I resigned without knowledge of any plans to close the Kennedy Center,” Couch said to a reporter. “And I hope the institution uses this moment to refocus on its mission and support of artists.” He added that a friend of his texted him, “Dude, it’s like you got the last helicopter out of ‘Nam’.”

The NSO had no plans to leave the Kennedy Center, even though presidential prerogatives have caused the ensemble disastrous expenses. When Trump allowed FIFA to take over the center for two weeks to hold its World Cup draw, the NSO had to cancel concerts, planned for December 4 to 6, featuring Camilla Nylund and Tomasz Konieczny in Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony. Although it was hoped to move this program to next March, it will have to be postponed to a future season, according to sources at the Kennedy Center. Violinist Jennifer Koh also had to postpone her concert on the Fortas Chamber Music series around that time.

Another celebrity event last month, the VIP screening of the documentary Melania, reduced the size of the audience in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall for a regular NSO Thursday program. Road closures and a lengthy security check, necessary for the attendance of President Trump and other dignitaries, made it difficult for devoted listeners even to reach the Concert Hall. Neither of these events is among the intended functions of the Kennedy Center.

The growing drumbeat of bad news for the Kennedy Center has tragically coincided with the area’s leading newspaper, the Washington Post, firing its classical music critic and gutting almost all of its coverage of the local arts scene. Departing critic Michael Andor Brodeur’s predecessor at the paper, Anne Midgette, critiqued this short-sighted decision by the paper’s current owner, Jeff Bezos. A category heading for the Arts is no longer even included on the Washington Post website.

When music director Gianandrea Noseda returned to the podium in January, he put out a statement on social media to NSO listeners: “Your orchestra wishes to stay close to you, to bring you comfort and joy, and to continue building a space of respect, dialogue, and empathy through music.” The NSO’s loyal audience, judging by its vociferous support at last week’s NSO concerts, wants to remain close to their orchestra as well, not least because Noseda’s leadership has brought them to new heights in terms of a distinctive sound and ensemble cohesion. Throwing the closure wrench into this already precarious situation will cause irreparable damage to the NSO. 

President Trump should put aside his ego and power-play, step down as Kennedy Center chairman and restore real non-politicized independence to the arts center if he is genuinely sincere about wanting to save it.

If he continues instead along this current destructive path, the name of President Trump—whatever his other achievements—will forever be associated in the nation’s capital with one of the greatest, self-inflicted failures in the history of American performing arts.