The newly MAGAfied Kennedy Center fired a veteran staffer who had been working there for nearly a decade.
Sarah Kramer was fired from her role as senior director of artistic operations, she confirmed to NPR on Wednesday night, just as The Washington Post reported that the center’s new programming head resigned after less than two weeks on the job.
An automatic reply from Kramer’s work email address states that “Sarah Kramer is no longer an employee of the Kennedy Center.” The organization did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Kramer’s LinkedIn profile indicates that she has spent the past decade rising through the ranks of the once-venerated cultural institution.
She started as an assistant manager for special programming in 2016. Over the years, she was promoted to assistant manager, then manager for programming, then director, and finally senior director of artistic operations.
“Sarah is a member of the Programming team, working across both the curatorial and production teams and across all genres,” her bio on the Kennedy Center website reads. “Her heart and career started with dance and she aspires to actually put on a pair of tap shoes instead of shuffling around her kitchen with a stray ‘Shuffle Off to Buffalo.’”
The Kennedy Center has been plagued by controversy since President Donald Trump remade it in his image in February last year.
Kevin Couch was brought in as senior vice president of artistic programming to expand the center’s “commonsense programming,” according to a Jan. 16 press release. But on Wednesday, he confirmed his resignation in an interview with the Post.
“I look forward to the extraordinary creative possibilities ahead — championing our artists and partners to deliver meaningful experiences at America’s cultural center,” Couch had said in the press release. He did not disclose the reason for his resignation.
The center has been struggling to sell tickets as scores of renowned artists and performance groups cancel their shows and residencies, many as a form of protest against its MAGA makeover.
This month alone, Grammy-winning soprano Renée Fleming backed out due to what the center described as a “scheduling conflict.” The Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest such group in the U.S., canceled its April show without offering an explanation. The Washington National Opera also ended its five-decade residency at the Kennedy Center earlier this month.
In December, the board appointed by Trump announced it would rename the venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center despite needing congressional approval to do so.
However, the president attempted to wash his hands of the “massive deficit” plaguing the center.
“People don’t realize that The Trump Kennedy Center suffered massive deficits for many years and, like everything else, I merely came in to save it and, if possible, make it far better than ever before!” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday.
The post Kennedy Center Veteran Fired From Trumpy Venue After 10 Years appeared first on The Daily Beast.
