Dark House What to make of the Kennedy Center’s abrupt closure?

In a Truth Social post on February 1, Donald Trump made a startling announcement: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close for two years for “a complete rebuilding” starting on July 4, America’s Independence Day. Even after a year of drama at the center, the news apparently came as a surprise to the staff, to some of the board, and to members of the U.S. Senate. It also sent shockwaves through the U.S. culture sector.

Congress allocated $257 million for repairs in 2025, apparently at the president’s request, but closure had not been discussed publicly. The center had recently completed a major modernization and physical expansion in 2019, using $200 million in privately donated funds. Now, bizarrely, Trump claimed the building (which he has disparaged repeatedly in the past year) was unsafe for audiences and promised a “new and beautiful landmark.” No information has been given publicly on who the architect might be, about what people or groups the board consulted with, or what the project’s goals might be—as if it were not in the public interest and could be handled privately. Memories were fresh of Trump’s swift demolition of the White House’s East Wing last year, which was also initially described as a renovation.

It was an imperious decision even by Trump’s standards. The proclamation sounded regal, yet it was unclear whether Trump has the authority to make such a decision. Although he was installed as chairman of the board in 2025, the Kennedy Center is a complicated public-private partnership, and is theoretically subject to certain kinds of approval from the Congress. It is both an official historical memorial site (maintained with public funds) and a nonprofit arts organization (operated privately).

The Truth Social announcement created confusion and anger. Democrats in the House of Representatives called the plan illegal and demanded more information. Some Republicans expressed bafflement. Some of the labor unions with contracts at the center threatened legal action. The center’s staff, who had already endured rounds of layoffs and struggled with cancelled programming, despaired for their livelihoods.

The announcement also came as thousands of protestors thronged the streets of frigid Minneapolis opposing a weeks-long operation in the city by federal immigration agents, masked and violent. It was hardly the week’s most urgent news, given the killing of two protestors and the chaos in Minnesota. But the closure astounded the arts world and capped a year of turmoil at the nation’s iconic presenting house.

How should we understand this gesture politically and what are the implications for the performing arts in the U.S.? Is the Kennedy Center’s approaching darkness a sign of failure--one more casualty of recklessness and incompetence? Executive caprice? Or some ominous sign of future authoritarian control over the performing arts?

I.

When prominent American artists in the Civil Rights Movement spoke out against government injustice in the 1960s, then-President John F. Kennedy said that “if sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice…makes [him] aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.” The Center for the Performing Arts named for Kennedy, an arts-loving statesman assassinated in 1963, opened in 1971. A white marble building with seven theaters perched along the Potomac River, it possesses sweeping views of the U.S. capital city. With striking crystal chandeliers and a regal red carpet leading visitors into the building, the landmark held a stateliness and glamor that memorialized the slain president while also honoring the performing arts. The institutional architecture might be dated, but when you walk into the building, you feel a little bit of Jackie Onassis glamour, the dignity of a bygone era—a better time, with more integrity and better leaders.

On my most recent visit, well before the Covid pandemic, I stood on the promenade before a performance, watching planes and boats move along the river. I took a photo of an engraving in the stone--a quote of John Kennedy’s words. It reads: “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.” I marveled at Kennedy’s idealistic tone and thought about the discrepancy between this shrine and the way American artists are actually treated. After all, the country has always celebrated commercially successful creative people but does not support or understand artists.

Here, inside the center, however, opera, orchestral and chamber music, ballet, theater, jazz, all had dedicated homes, alongside many programs for many audiences and communities, including one for hip-hop culture.

Partly because of its geography, and partly due to its unique status as (simultaneously) a public memorial funded by the government and an independent, private, performing-arts nonprofit organization, most Americans (and foreigners too) assume that the Kennedy Center somehow represents “the best” of American performing arts, as if it must be a crown jewel among arts organizations. It is best known, of course, for the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual celebrity-packed gala which is televised nationally and is a high point in the calendar for Washington society. The center was also known for presenting top — though not edgy — classical companies alongside popular entertainment: The Washington National Opera has performed its season there since 1977. The National Symphony Orchestra has based its concerts there since the center opened, formally affiliating with the Center in 1986. The improv-comedy Shear Madness, a crowd-pleasing murder mystery set in a hair salon, has played continuously since 1987, delighting audiences (who seem to appear in inexhaustible supply when escapist fun is offered).

Other functions were less well-known, but still essential to the center’s national stature. For 58 years a festival of theater created at American colleges and universities brought approximately 18,000 students to the building each year. In 2010, then-artistic director Michael Kaiser founded the Kennedy Center Arts Management Institute (now the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the nearby University of Maryland), which provided advanced training to young arts professionals from around the world and sponsored workshops and continuing education for established managers.

Cutting-edge performance and theater wasn’t really what defined the Kennedy Center or what made it prestigious. The programming, at least on the large stages, generally served a culturally conservative audience. It was dignified but rarely provocative or raw. You could see the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi, or the Royal Shakespeare Company, and there were sometimes programs or festivals that seemed to correspond to diplomatic priorities or official initiatives: weeks dedicated to performances from China, for instance, or initiatives like “Arts of the Arab World”—certainly valuable for their scale and breadth. Classy and respectable, it could also feel polished and subdued. Still, the center served Washington audiences with vitality for decades, a living memorial and buzzing hub on the Potomac.

II.

It is hard to say exactly why the second Trump administration set out to transform the organization. Some observers have speculated that Trump mainly coveted the spotlight for the awards ceremony, which he did not attend during his first term. (Trump hosted the 2025 ceremony himself, denouncing the audience as “miserable, horrible people” and giving awards to entertainers like Sylvester Stallone, Michael Crawford, and the band KISS, who did not boycott the event.) Or perhaps he longed to control the center precisely because of the qualities that made it a civic beacon. Although it served diverse communities, it was a space where professional Washington could gather and socialize, transcending party affiliation—the sort of place where the progressive Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would go to the opera with her friend, the staunch conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Led for decades by a board carefully drawn from both major political parties, Trump abruptly sought to tilt it to populism and partisanship.

In February 2025 the arts world was shocked to realize that the administration was taking an interest in the non-governmental Kennedy Center. First they used their appointment powers to aggressively shake up the bipartisan board—dismissing Democrats and appointing Republicans. The new board then elected Trump board chairman (a position normally held by a prominent philanthropist with large fundraising responsibilities). Some evicted members contested the vote. The center’s longtime president, Deborah Rutter, was summarily dismissed. Trump loyalist Richard Grenell, a former ambassador with no experience in arts administration, was appointed. The new management alleged that the ousted leaders had been fiscally irresponsible and claimed that “woke” programming and the inclusion of drag queens had been driving away audiences. (Rutter pointed out that the center had passed frequent audits and that the bipartisan board had endorsed her leadership.) Worse, they alleged, the center had relied on an untenable business model: performances did not make enough money to cover their costs--as if it were a failure for a performing arts nonprofit to cover the gap with philanthropic donations. (This of course is the norm in the U.S. cultural sector, which largely operates without government subsidy.) All productions would now need to “break even” before opening. Popular programming would further ensure profits.

On one level, this was a performing-arts version of what authoritarians do elsewhere--declaring a false emergency or crisis to justify their disruption. So much did not make sense. How can an arts complex suddenly need total rebuilding? Why would a performing arts program somehow be a scandalous failure because costs exceed ticket sales, when that is the challenge and model that has always guided the industry? Most American arts institutions hold private nonprofit status precisely because they provide the public with something a commercial sector cannot.

Simultaneously in early 2025, artists were also outraged by the defunding of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, preposterously headed by the billionaire Elon Musk. Following the classic authoritarian playbook, they first put loyalists in charge of the agencies, then cancelled grants to artists and organizations, fired staff, and reduced many federally funded cultural programs to insignificance. The agencies—which had been favorite targets of conservatives since the 1990s “culture wars” (even though they sustained beloved museums and programs everywhere in the country) —were effectively dismantled.

With ticket sales at the center plummeting, shows cancelled, donors becoming wary, and prominent artists refusing to work at this newly politicized center, pressure mounted. The college theater festival ended its longtime affiliation and relocated.

Meanwhile a large infusion of public funds for the renovation came from Congress.

In December, after months of the president half-joking that the center should bear his name, sycophantic Republican trustees voted to rename the center “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” apparently to honor his 10 months of service as board chair. The arts world was outraged. The legality of the change was (and remains) disputed by the Kennedy family and by Democrats. But new lettering was added to the building’s façade the next day, and branded communications started using the new name.

The move added to a perception in the art world that the center was becoming a showcase for a cult of personality. Naming things for a living ruler is, obviously, a hallmark of despotism. The reputational damage was too much for many artists and longtime affiliates. Only two weeks after getting hired, the latest Senior Vice President of Artistic Programming resigned abruptly in January. That same month, the Washington National Opera announced that it would no longer perform at the center, relocating its spring season on short notice to new venues around the city. Composer Philip Glass withdrew his symphony, commissioned by the NSO to commemorate Abraham Lincoln for the nation’s 250th year. Soon afterwards came the closure, which now presents a major dilemma for the NSO, whose finances are integrated with the center’s. Questions remain about nearly every aspect of the center’s future.

III.

Will the Kennedy Center’s renovation lead to the unilateral destruction of a landmark, as it did with the East Wing? If not, why is all the planning shielded from public view? Why was the announcement made so abruptly, when arts organizations typically plan years ahead and so many groups will be affected? Should we understand the move as spin control, a way to stop the bad publicity from artists’ opposition? Is it a tantrum by an aspiring monarch, when things weren’t working in his favor? Or are these two years of darkness the start of a gestation period, during which the Republicans’ declared new vision for a “Golden Age” of non-elitist, profitable performing arts will take shape for the seasons to come? Why is a total closing necessary, if not to stop the criticism and silence the boycotting artists?

U.S. voters, bitterly divided for a long time, have grown increasingly disillusioned with the Trump administration in recent months. Approval numbers have plunged. In that light, the Kennedy Center’s shuttering also looks like one more example of the administration’s precarious political position: With an extremely narrow majority in Congress and an unpopular agenda, Trump has passed very little legislation. He has hardly even tried. Most of his controversial actions in the past year have been the result of “executive orders,” memos directing government agencies to take new policies. Many executive initiatives have been blocked by federal courts (though sometimes temporarily permitted to progress by the Supreme Court). Unable to pass laws (the awful “Big Beautiful Bill” allocating huge funds for ICE is an exception), the administration focuses on what it can do and what it knows how to do--dismantle and destroy liberal democracy using executive and “emergency” authority. What, after all, has it been able to build? There are few new programs benefitting Americans, nothing helping with health care access or high grocery and energy bills. No affordable housing initiatives, despite his claims to be a real-estate visionary. So a highly visible arts center, with a name and image tied to an era many Americans remember with great nostalgia, makes a useful prop.

On one hand, the far-right won’t fund the arts or humanities, and have closed down the federal agencies for it. On the other, culture and cultural resentment have been key to the far-right’s acquisition of power. Online culture sustains them. The culture of their rallies has been essential, creating joyful outlets for their supporters, people coping with moral disorientation in a time of enormous change. Manipulation of symbols—that is to say, culture--is everything for this political movement.

In that way, the Trumpists may have contradictory impulses for the once-grand center: they love the media opportunity of a red-carpeted palace—a space for MAGA events and the Melania movie premiere. But they also like the optics of the wrecking ball, remaking a supposedly elitist cultural playground with its operas and theater and occasional tolerance for drag. What’s sad is that a theater with so many dimensions is now so completely politicized. As always happens with this heedless administration, it is ordinary people who live with less after the media storm dies down. For Washington DC, the vibrant city actually served by the Kennedy Center, the loss of performances and plays and music will leave a great hole in the cultural field. For the rest of the nation, for whom the center is more of a symbol than a place to visit, its collapse and closing demonstrates to all the world our descent into spiritual poverty.

Tom Sellar has contributed articles about North American theater and performing arts to Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift since 2016.