Trump takes over the Kennedy Center

Updated at. 16.30 on February 7, 2025

Artists bothered Donald Trump when he first came to Washington. Now that Trump is back in power, he is determined not to let it happen again.

Trump plans to announce the dismissal of several members of the Kennedy Center, as soon as today, a group that is likely to include the recent appointed by former President Joe Biden; Among those on the current board is the democratic political strategist Mike Donilon, the former press secretary of the White House Karine Jean-Pierre, and the Democratic National Committee’s Finance Chairman Chris Korge. The White House has also had discussions about having Trump himself installed as chairman of the board, according to two people who are familiar with the cleaning requesting anonymity to describe plans that are not yet public.

A spokesman for the White House refused to comment.

“The Kennedy Center has not received any formal messages from the White House about what you have reported,” Eileen Andrews, the Center’s Vice President of PR -Public Relations, said after this article published.

Trump never attended the Kennedy Center’s annual gala event during his first period when artists protested his administration and threatened to boycott the Kennedy Center events in the White House. Now Trump is clear that he will not be sidelined again from the most famous cultural institution in Washington.

“The attitude is different this time. The attitude is Go fuck yourself“Said one of the people familiar with the planning. “It’s ridiculous for four years for Trump and Melania to say,” We’re not going to the Kennedy Center because Robert de Niro doesn’t like us. “” (De Niro was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2009 and spoke in 2024 cases.)

Trump’s relationship with the art world has long been strained. During his first year in office, all 17 members of the President’s Committee on Art and Humanities, a non -partic counseling body, whose members had been appointed by President Barack Obama at that time, over what they called Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” After White-nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump later dissolved the group rather than replacing the committee created by Ronald Reagan.

Later that year, three of the five artists who were recognized in the annual Kennedy Center -Head Certificate said they would not participate in or consider a boycott of the traditional reception of the White House before the gala, quoting various objections to Trump’s leadership . Trump canceled the reception in response and became the first sitting president who did not attend the gala at any time during his period since the beginning of 1978.

Trump showed a similar lack of interest in the National Medal of Arts, the government’s highest award for artists and artists that the president supervises. In his first period, Trump distributed only nine medals, including an award to musicians from the US military. Obama had awarded 76 medals over eight years, and Bide handed out 33 during his four -year period.

Trump was more careful with the Kennedy Center, alternately praised and criticized federal funding for the institution. “They need some funding. And I said, ‘Look, it was a democratic request. It wasn’t my request. But you have to give them something, ” Said Trump By 2020, when he was asked for a proposed $ 25 million in further funding as part of a Covid-Relief Bill. “Kennedy Center, they do a beautiful job – an incredible job.”

Weeks later he changed his position. “I hated putting it in the bill because it’s just not appropriate,” he said of the financing.

If Trump became chairman of the Kennedy Center Board, he would replace the philanthropist David Rubenstein, who has held the position for 14 years but signaled that he will move on after September 2026. One week after Trump’s second inauguration, Kennedy Center announced President Deborah Rutter her own Plans to resign at the end of the year.

In his second period, Trump takes a more confident approach to a number of cultural institutions. Within a few hours after its inauguration abolished The president’s selection of art and the humanities, which Biden had revived in 2022, and except any possibility of another mass depreciation. Then he moved to impose his own views on government -funded cultural projects.

Nine days into his second period he signed an executive order Restart planning For an idea from his first period: a national “Garden of American Heroes”, location to be determined. Trump had previously named 244 Honorees—52 of them women – who would get statues, including figures from science, sports, entertainment, politics and business, as well as some of the country’s founders. (The family of at least one would be Honoree, the anti -communist Whittaker Chambers, later asked that he was not included.)

Trump also moved quickly to impose his vision of the plans for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence – 4, July 4, 2026, also known as Semiquentennial. He created a new advisory panel, called Task Force 250, that he will chair to support a congress -funded organization that has already begun planning events.

During the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted the semiquentennial celebrations to last more than a year, from Memorial Day 2025 – just 15 weeks away – until July 4, 2026. He proposed A “great US state fair” in Iowa as a component, a tribute to the state’s own summer fair tradition, but with pavilions from each state. He also promised the creation of a new national high school competition, called The Patriot Games, to take place with the fair. “Together we will build it and they come,” he said In 2023.

Trump’s new -found interest in art represents a kind of departure. In his first period, Trump repeatedly tried to draw funding for National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for Humanities, two major sources to support art and cultural programs around the country. But grants in Congress disregarded him, and by the end of his period the annual financing rose slightly from the beginning of his period and sat at more than $ 167 million for each agency. (The number rose to $ 207 million during the bite’s presidency.)

This time, Trump has prayed chairs for both art and humanities gifts to join the Task Force 250. Nina Ozlu Tunceli, the top lobbyist at NonProfit Arts Action Fund, which has worked for decades with Congress to secure art financing, she told us she told us, she told us she told us, she told us she told us is hopeful that Trump’s interest in the 250th celebration will give “a very good lifeline” to Endowments’ funding.

Still, Trump’s executive order calls for “termination” of all diversity, justice and inclusion programs in the federal government will become a source of excitement – and another way for him to claim his willingness to art. In the latest budgets under Biden, house manufacturers praised gifts for “to tackle equity through the art” and “Diversity at the national endowment.” “The committee (appropriations) requires NEA to continue to prioritize the diversity of his work,” Read a paragraph of the budget for the financial year 2023.

Given the changes that have already begun under Trump, Ozlu Tunceli said, “These programs will definitely be removed.”