This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.
When the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened its doors in September of 1971, it was a solemn celebration featuring a radical new work from Leonard Bernstein: his genre-jumping Mass commissioned by the widow of the nation’s first Catholic President. But there was one bold-faced name notably missing from the glittering new Opera House: sitting President Richard Nixon.
It was no accident. The White House had pulled Bernstein’s FBI file—one that eventually tallied more than 800 pages and was obtained by The New Yorker’s classical music ace Alex Ross through a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009—and warned that the work was likely to reflect Bernstein’s long-understood anti-Vietnam War activism. To get around the potentially awkward evening, Nixon attended a National Symphony Orchestra event instead, leaving that “son of a bitch” Bernstein at arm’s length. That was Richard Nixon’s approach to this nation’s high temple for the performing arts. He suspected he would not appreciate a work or its message, but it never dawned on him to shut it down. Nixon, as well as anyone, understood the soft-power potential for cultural engagement.
A half-century later, Donald Trump gave a similar wide berth to the Kennedy Center during his first term. He came about that posture through the Center’s annual Kennedy Center Honors, in which a handful of artists or groups are honored for contributions to American culture. The President and First Lady traditionally attend the star-studded ceremony and host the honorees at the White House. In Trump’s first year in office, three honorees threatened to skip the made-for-TV event rather than share space with Trump. Backed into an impossible corner of weakness, Trump steered clear of the ceremony throughout his term, allowing the likes of Norman Lear and Lin-Manuel Miranda to take part without having to shake Trump’s hand. For Trump, it was a true Nixonian display of diplomacy. He never set foot in what is essentially a palace to the national performing arts.
This time, Trump is not feeling as magnanimous. Over a matter of days, the President dismissed Kennedy Center board members appointed by Joe Biden to six-year terms, named himself the chairman of the governing body, and installed a loyalist, Richard Grenell, as its interim leader. On Wednesday, his total takeover of that institution seemed complete: a board entirely of Trump appointees unanimously made him the chairman, empowered, in effect, to police the artistic choices being made on the de facto national stage.
“We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!” Trump posted on his social media platform.
The impact of this MAGA takeover of the Kennedy Center could be immediately seen. The center’s longtime chief, Deborah F. Rutter, is now out, and musician Ben Folds quickly resigned from his post as an artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, which calls the Kennedy Center its home.
The Kennedy Center Honors may be where Trump’s new involvement plays out most visibly. Although the honorees are selected by the board and past winners, it’s hard to imagine recent winners like Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney accepting such an accolade if they know Trump had taken on a more conspicuous role. Indeed, the Kennedy Center Honors over the next four years may end up going exclusively to those artists comfortable standing alongside Trump.
A similar shift could undergo another Kennedy Center franchise—the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor— which is usually selected by a nebulous circle of Kennedy Center insiders. The award—perhaps the most prestigious honor in comedy—has gone in recent years to Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, and Julia-Louis Dreyfus. (This year’s honoree, Conan O’Brien—who is set to be feted next month—has largely steered clear of politics but did back Biden in 2020.)
The stakes of all this may seem low—famous people not getting awards is hardly the biggest problem out there—but what the Kennedy Center chooses to put on its stages can reverberate in Hollywood, and, through its products, around the world. Roughly 2,200 events take place there annually, drawing 2 million visitors—all of whom may feel Trump’s hand as curator. And as it stacks its calendar with world premieres of musical theater, operas, and orchestral and dance works, the Kennedy Center’s lineup also amounts to a low-key piece of cultural diplomacy. There’s a reason the law requires the Secretary of State to have a seat at the table for board meetings. The Kennedy Center Honors typically makes the State Department one of its stages during the weekend of parties.
On the surface, Trump is blaming his takeover effort on recent Kennedy Center’s events that featured drag queens. But all the while, the President is openly musing about giving himself booking power going forward.
“We took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things,” Trump said Monday. “I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be ‘woke.’”
Politics has never been completely walled off from the Kennedy Center, nor have the arts ever been immune to politics. The threat of boycotts still spooks any organization where even the slightest whiff could threaten donors’ loyalties.
Similarly, alienating a President seemingly intent on smashing anything approaching dissent or disloyalty is not a risk many Washington institutions are willing to take at the moment. After Trump signed an executive order ending diversity programs across the federal government, the Smithsonian, which is not actually a federal agency, quickly eliminated its own such efforts. (Two-thirds of the institution’s employers are, however, federal workers and Congress does have an oversight and funding role.)
Meanwhile, some corporations with government ties are taking steps to unspool anything that could draw negative attention from Trump. Just Monday, massive government contractor Booz Allen announced it was dropping out as a lead sponsor of this summer’s World Pride, which is expected to draw as many as 3 million LGBTQ individuals to the D.C. region.
So, yes, the chill is real. Now, we are on the brink of seeing a Kennedy Center stacked with things of Trump’s tastes.
On his social media platform, Trump posted an A.I.-generated image of him as a conductor. “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” he captioned the fake picture as the purge of 18 board members shocked the D.C. arts community that had expected another four years of benign indifference.
Nixon understood the Kennedy Center’s true audience is not the D.C. crowd plodding the plush red carpeting or standing on the newly restored terrace. The world watches the programming on that campus. It’s why, in the face of a public scolding, he stayed away but let the world see free speech and art be demonstrated without fear of censorship. These days, Trump is giving himself a role as an arbiter of American taste. The Kennedy Center is just another stage for Trump, but one he may unilaterally curate based on his whims without regard to what messages it sends about the national identity.
Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
The post Why Trump’s Takeover of the Kennedy Center Will Reverberate in Hollywood and Beyond appeared first on TIME.
