To the Editor:
Re “Upheaval Unsettles National Symphony” (Arts, Jan. 28):
Kudos to the composer Philip Glass for refusing to have the current administration sully the meaning of his work.
Mr. Glass’s refusal to allow the performance of his commissioned work at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a testament to the power artists ought to exercise in determining the conditions in which their work is presented. That, after all, is part of the sociopolitical context that all art participates in once it is shared with the public, whether the work is ostensibly political or not.
Since Mr. Glass’s symphony was written to honor Abraham Lincoln and the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center, it is even more crucial that it be protected from the avaricious desire of the current president to glom onto the well-earned significance and prestige of truly important presidents like Lincoln and Kennedy.
Dale Kaplan Dorchester, Mass.
To the Editor:
So Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for public relations, believes that there is no place for politics in the arts? She should then be informed of a few historical facts.
In 1786, Mozart premiered his opera “The Marriage of Figaro,” based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais, an allegory about the French aristocracy.
In 1804, Beethoven retracted his dedication of his Symphony No. 3 to Napoleon in protest of his crowning himself emperor of France.
In 1938, Arturo Toscanini refused to return to the Salzburg Festival in Austria in protest of Hitler’s annexation of Austria.
This list only scratches the surface of how politics has affected the arts over recent history. And it proves that the artists who have recently refused to perform at the Kennedy Center are in extremely good company.
Arthur J. Horowitz Washington
To the Editor:
Picasso famously refused to have his 1937 painting “Guernica,” which viscerally depicted the horrors of war, displayed in Francisco Franco’s fascist Spain. That refusal lasted his entire life.
In 1981, years after both Picasso and Franco had died, “Guernica” was moved to Madrid, where it was seen by roughly a million people within a year.
There will be a time for Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 15 to be performed at the Kennedy Center, and it will be a celebration.
Robert Wilkinson Berea, Ohio
To the Editor:
The view of Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for public relations, that politics have no place in the arts is illogical, at best.
President Trump’s tarnishing of the Kennedy Center by installing his name on the building’s facade — above the name of the president it was meant to honor — was a blatant political act.
Art is political. Bravo to Philip Glass and other artists who create their work on moral and ethical ground commensurate with the principles of freedom, compassion and democracy that are memorialized in the Kennedy Center.
Please, may all artists follow. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Barb LeSavoy Rochester, N.Y. The writer is an associate professor emerita in the department of women and gender at the State University of New York, Brockport.
Real Leaders Remind Us of Our Shared Humanity
To the Editor:
How do effective leaders talk to the public after tragic events? They console. They speak of unity and shared pain. They talk of moving forward, together, to prevent future calamities from ever happening again. They remind us to see humanity in one another even when we don’t agree.
Examples from history include Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the eulogy for the girls killed in the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah spoke after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last September about the importance of being able to disagree peacefully.
In contrast, after the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, our nation’s top leaders — including President Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem — inflamed the situation by assigning blame and telling lies. (The president’s reported softening of tone after Mr. Pretti’s death was too little and too late.)
Perhaps that is the point. Rather than lead at this sorrowful time, they increased the show of force and ramped up the rhetoric.
President Trump and his team may be looking for a pretext to declare martial law before the midterm elections because they know that they are not the leaders whom the American people want and need right now.
Jeannine Ramsey Madison, Wis.
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