The KenCen Coup and What It Portends, Part I

Amid the blizzard of executive orders and public pronouncements flowing from Donald Trump since his inauguration are several that should concern anyone working in the arts and culture nonprofit world. During his first term, Trump evinced little interest in or knowledge of the arts. But this time around is promising to be quite different.

“He apparently wants a veto over content at one of the country’s preeminent cultural institutions,” writes Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post. Trump’s lightning assault on the Kennedy Center is unprecedented. In short order he has dismissed David Rubenstein, the board chair whose personal giving to the organization over the past decade has topped $110 million, as well as 18 board members appointed by his Democratic predecessors. He has removed Deborah Rutter, the well-respected president of the KenCen for the past ten years, and installed as interim president Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence as well as a faithful Trump consigliere.

And Trump has been elected chairman of the arts organization by its 31 board members, vowing on Truth Social to “make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place.” This coup raises a host of questions. What happens to the programming, planned years in advance, at organizations like the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera? What if Brahms is to be supplanted by Mantovani? Or Jonas Kauffmann replaced by Christopher Macchio, the president’s go-to tenor?

Will MAGA-averse performers choose to boycott the KenCen’s constituent organizations? How will staff members respond to direction from a leader with absolutely no background in the arts? Will such revered programs as The Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Humor Prize be dropped or forced to succumb to Trump’s whims? There is little reason for optimism regarding the answers to such questions.

Trump is also intent on rooting out what he deems “illegal… diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.” The fallout from the initial targets of his diktat—institutions that directly use federal funding in their budget—was immediate and acquiescent. The National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have all scrubbed DEI language from their websites and assured the new administration that they are in compliance with the executive order.

At the National Endowment for the Arts, where Mary Anne Carter, who served as chair during the first Trump administration and is now acting in an interim capacity, the Challenge Americas grant program has been axed. The modest $10,000 grants had been targeted at underserved communities. Going forward the NEA will prioritize projects celebrating the nation’s semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026.

The upheaval at the Kennedy Center and the all-out assault on DEI programs have captured much of the early attention regarding the Trump administration’s initial forays into cultural engineering. But the implications for the nation’s nonprofit arts and cultural institutions are far broader.

Washington Post