Is the New KenCen Chair Up to the Job?

Last week was the week that was for the Kennedy Center. With head-spinning speed, Donald Trump fired all President Biden’s appointees to the organization’s board as well as its Chairman David Rubenstein; appointed new board members who promptly elected him chairman and fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president; and named Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, as interim president. At least three other top staff members lost their jobs.

The Trumpian purge has raised concerns that the programming will be dramatically revamped. Some performers have dropped out, but it is too early to forecast a mass exodus by artists opposed to the new management. The center’s financial condition may ultimately prove the more troublesome issue.

The Kennedy Center is not a federal Agency; it is a semi-independent nonprofit operating as a public-private partnership under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institution. Only 16 percent of its $268 million annual operating budget—about $43 million— comes from the federal government, and none of that subsidy is spent on programming. Its relatively modest $163 million endowment offers little budgetary assistance. Almost every dollar other than the federal contribution must be earned or raised.

“It’s a very hefty fund-raising challenge,” said Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management and for 13 years president of the Kennedy Center. Supported by a professional development staff of 70, Rutter and Rubenstein had proven to be a successful team, raising nearly $141 million in the 2023 fiscal year. Rubenstein alone had given the center well over $100 million during his decade as chairman.

The new west wing

Whether Trump can enjoy this sort of success is an open question. One arts management professor describes the center as having become “a division of the White House… [that] might make donors think twice about contributing to the federal government.” On the other hand, a former president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music believes that “people will give money based on the fact that he [Trump] may be asking them for it.”

Past giving has been relatively nonpartisan. The billionaire investor Stephen A. Schwarzman, a Trump supporter, gives at least $1 million annually, as does energy magnate Roger Sant, whose wife is a Democratic congresswoman from California.

The other major income source are revenues earned from ticket sales—$121 million—and other forms of earned income such as space rentals and the fees paid for broadcast rights to performances and events like the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and the Kennedy Center Honors program. Trump’s stated promise to “make it hot” suggests confidence that the new management will have no trouble filling the seats.

But some arts professionals are not so sure, fearing that Trump and his minions are underestimating the amount of experience and expertise needed to run and fund an organization like the Kennedy Center.

To the extent that this knowledge and experience are gone and the center tries to maintain its mission, says Reynold Levy, the former president of Lincoln Center and a philanthropy expert, “It’s going to be severely handicapped.”

The New York Times