After announcing he will close the Kennedy Center for two years in his capacity as chairman of its board, President Trump must have assumed he’d owned the liberals who once frequented events there. No more opera for you, wokerati! (A shame to miss out on “Cats,” though…) Anyway, he’d thrown down the gauntlet—and the final curtain.
But pro-democracy patrons of the arts have so many other concerns today: the shooting of protestors in Minneapolis, immigrant children being detained in record numbers, voting rolls seized in Georgia, intimations of possible kinetic action against Iran. A “time out” for the Kennedy Center is more of a problem for Trump than his adversaries.
Because at its core, the shutdown is to cover up the sad truth that Trump has strangled the Kennedy Center. They can’t sell tickets, and artists won’t play ball. “Anybody that anybody wants to see isn’t willing to perform,” noted Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings, adding that the closure is about “face-saving.”
“The closing of the Kennedy Center is singularly and solely to stop the bleeding,” one of its longtime event producers told the Daily Beast. “Yes, it’s an older building that can use some renovation, but the narrative that it’s dilapidated and infested with rats is an absolute farce. The problem is there are NO artists, NO audiences and NO donors.”
And it’s worse than you think, this source said, with less than 30% of National Symphony Orchestra subscribers renewing their passes, down sharply from the 50% they’re admitting to. Speaking anonymously, the producer recalled Trump’s recent tour of the Center, during which he mused about getting marble armrests in the opera house boxes. and replacing the signature red carpeting in the Great Hall—a color then-First Lady Jackie Kennedy was partial to—with a more modern beige. (Trump also chose the shade of gold that he wants for the Center’s signature columns, autographing the paint splotch with a Sharpie.) When the opera house was last renovated some fifteen years ago, it took 36 months and some 40 million dollars. “None of what he wants is going to happen in two years,” the source added.
The outcry to the announced closing is more resignation than resistance. This too shall pass. But even so, as I write these words, I’m mindful of the hoofbeats of history when people ignore or minimize the role—or the coopting—of the arts in advancing autocratic regimes.
Kamarck predicts the next president, even if a Republican, will take Trump’s name off the building. Her husband, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a longtime Maryland Democrat, jumped into our phone conversation, reminding us that with autocrats, it’s all about “what edifice they are remembered for.” Trump’s compulsion to build things and put his name on them is part of the “edifice complex” to ensure that, even long after he is dead, he will not be forgotten, Hoyer continued. “It’s all part of his belief that he is the best president ever when he is the worst… He just wants to be around forever, and he’s a builder. That’s what he’s done all his life.”
Others more deeply involved in the performing arts feel personally assailed. “To me, it’s just a catastrophe, like watching your house drift away off the cliff,” Kandie Stroud told the Daily Beast. She just received her 50-year pin from the Choral Arts Society, having spent decades singing the words of the great composers before appreciative audiences at the Kennedy Center. Appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission on the Arts for the Kennedy Center during the Clinton years, she added, “It feels like someone just spit on the spiritual home of the arts.”
Stroud was there on that night in 1971 when the Kennedy Center first opened, a reporter with her notebook and her photographer right behind Jackie Kennedy and Roger Stevens, the Center’s founding chairman. “That picture hung in the Kennedy Center where visitors could see it for like 45 years—a reminder of the joy of this place,” Stroud said. “I don’t see the dilapidation.”
She doesn’t see it because it isn’t there. There’s normal wear and tear for sure, and renovations are scheduled. But Trump oversold what he could do for the Kennedy Center and performers rebelled at being turned into political pawns. Audiences stayed home and donors didn’t want to pour good money into a bad faith “revamp.” Trump is left looking for someone to blame because he will never blame himself.
For those of us who loved the Kennedy Center, it’s hard to mourn an edifice that’s had its soul ripped away.
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