What does Donald Trump want with the Kennedy Center for the Arts?
What could he possibly hope to accomplish?
Preface
George Washington is the only American President to have had no political party. Generally, he is considered to have been conservative.
The U.S is a Federal Constitutional Republic, the literal foundation of our government is a republic with some democratic policies to keep the government in check. By today’s standards, he [Washington] would abstain and remain independent but his policies would most likely lean more Republican with democratic restraints and views. https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/1audx1d/would_george_washington_be_a_republican_or/
Alexander Hamilton, he of the award-winning Broadway production,1 and also a Founder of the great U.S.A., served as Secretary of the Treasury under Washington from 1789-1795. Hamilton’s politics are as hard to figure out as Washington’s. He created a political party to oppose the only other party at the time, which was the “Republican Democrats.” Hamilton was conservative in most ways. He was a economic nationalist but accused of having monarchist sympathies. He had a temptestuous personal life including a scandalous affair with a younger woman. He was proud and died in a duel. He believed Presidents should be elected for life!! So by today’s standards, hardly your average progressive.
The backstory
In February of this year, President Trump unceremoniously fired the entire board of the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. and installed a new board, which promptly elected him Chair. The reason given by the President was that the Center was getting too “wokey.” Later he made up further damning allegations: that it is in terrible financial shape and the building is falling down.2
It is safe to say that the Kennedy Center, like all public cultural institutions, is suffering from all kinds of malaise. These are liberal institutions after all. They are built on the fault line between capitalism and socialism. They are usually founded by rich benefactors and supported by rich donors under tax schemes designed to encourage their largesse. Governments (city, state and federal) kick in to support the idea that capitalists have the public interest at heart but also to ensure pubic access and standards of professionalism.3
The predictably self-righteous response of some artists to the Kennedy Center takeover was to cancel their shows. Artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda, poutingly picked up his Hamilton soccer ball and went home.
Some artists wrote to the Kennedy Centre’s President Richard Grenell in protest. His response surprised many; he asked them if they would refuse to perform if Republicans were in attendance, a sobering reminder that public institutions are there to serve the public, all of us, neither just the privileged rich nor just the self-selected morally self-righteous.
The progress paradox
Artists can be relied upon to be at the forefront of every cultural development that has the appearance of progress. Artists have been schooled to believe in avant-garde, whatever is on the bleeding edge must be better the what preceded it and the more incomprehensible the new thing is, the more critically important it must be. Thus, we end up with Madonnas made of elephant dung, crucifixes submerged in urine, and bananas duct-taped to gallery walls.
On the other hand, artists—I count myself in that number—cannot be relied upon for measured responses to any change in our environment. We are indoctrinated with romantic myths of underdogs and bohemians, critique and revolution in art school. No matter how much ideology, perforce unconscious, infects everything we do, whatever flabby state we find ourselves in is just fine, thank you very much. “Let us wallow!” we chant.
“Progress” is thus measured by artists for the rest of us, by the few for the many. Any dissenting idea of the greater public good, any intervention by the uninitiated, will be spurned. There is no room for debate.
Viewed this way, Modernism can be considered to have been one spanking of the public after another, inflicted by self-selecting jihadists, affecting holier-than-thou superiority, in the name of cultural progressiveness. Wokeness is just its most current, superficial, populist manifestation.
President Trump’s intervention is, in this regard, a welcome injection of wokeness anti-venom. But is that all we can expect, a public slap back?
Waking the woke
A consensus is generally forming now that Woke is over. President Trump’s executive orders are certainly coming down hard on the worst offenders and are designed to send a message to the rest. But it’s hard to say how deeply the chill has penetrated.
It is, for example, impossible to determine just how “woke” the Kennedy Center is/was. Reviewers just don’t talk about it. I came across a Subtack note around March 18th that described an exceptionally “progressive” performance that sounded not merely offensively patronizing but politically retarded (to employ a useful but once censored expression), but I am unable to find it again. I’ll keep looking.
I have come across many noble defences of the Kennedy Center, of course. For example this one by
:Social impact is at the core of the Kennedy Center’s mission; it aims to “dismantle real and perceived barriers between ‘fine arts communities’ and the richly diverse communities…in the nation’s capital.” To that aim, the Center promotes multivocality in its performances and educational programming. Its already-announced slate of social impact programming for 2025 includes a celebration of World Pride in June, several commissions by Black composers and librettists for the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra through The Cartography Project—a program “dedicated to mapping Black dignity through music”—and free dance classes, catering to diverse dance styles, through Dance Sanctuaries.
There are many “woke” virtue signals in that defence: “dismantle, barriers, multivocality, social impact, mapping”. Not that these things being referred to with these words are not admirable goals for anyone or anything. They have their place. But the preponderance of them in one paragraph that is supposed to be about the a cultural center’s ambition is misplaced. Where is the talk of expression, art as a reflection of society, a form of truth, in fact?
Among the many voices of outrage and genuine concern for the Kennedy Center, I found this quote from the President after whom the Center is named:
We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” - John F. Kennedy
Such a quote sounds important, but it is singularly unhelpful because it begs the question of who is to distinguish between what is truth and what is persuasion masquerading as truth, which is precisely the disconnect we are experiencing in the culture generally. People who consider themselves allies of the arts regard everything Trumpian as propaganda and everything Leftist as truth, when the opposite could equally be said if you look at things from the other side.
What if wokeism is the least of our worries?
Other issues with cultural venues also urgently need to be addressed. Take, for example, this comment I found on TripAdvisor:
I have been attending performances at the KC for over 30 years and have subscribed to the ballet series for over 2 decades. The performances are often superb, but the overall experience has degraded to the point where after this season I will no longer attend anything here. Abolishing programs so that everyone brings in a live cell phone ensures that every performance is interrupted at least once by a cell phone ringing. This past Saturday we paid over $43 for two very small cups of very low quality wine. It has always been a rip off, but now it has reached the point of complete absurdity. The audience is mostly dressed like bums or clowns and some people feel compelled to comment loudly on the performances as if the rest of care what they think. There are many wonderful things to see and do in DC - leave the KC of your list. If you want a comparatively civilized experience go to a ball game. - erichertting, Washington DC, District of Columbia
I had a similar experience recently in my hometown where a “celebrity act,” relatively speaking, attracted a fan-base of young progressive types who could not sit still for more than a few minutes, kept changing seats, talking to each other, (and the performer on stage), using their phones, coming and going. It was shocking. They simply did not know how to behave at a public concert. In my day, when you did not know what to do in a new place surrounded by people you did not know, you sat still and kept your mouth shut until you figured it out. What’s happened?
If not woke, what?
Programming in the arts has become moribund, predictable, preachy, and insulting. Change is needed. President Trump’s intervention at the Kennedy Center is intended to send a message that things must change and change now.
Trump has been asked what kind of programming he might favour instead. His ideas (Cats, Kid Rock) have raised howls from the liberal press. It’s hard not to join their chorus. Arts programming is a serious business and needs to be handled by professionals.
The fact is, boards do not do programming at cultural venues. They hire people to do that, people who know the arts, are connected and know how to manage the complexities of personalities, agents, queries, auditions, contracts and scheduling before handing a carefully curated season of performances off to the expert producers, designers and technicians who make the magic happen. It’s a mill that churns out “culture,” that is, hopefully, Grade A rather than C+ with a Participation trophy.
At the moment, it’s unclear who is leading the Kennedy Center. The President has made clear what he does not favour. Which might not be a bad thing. At least we have a sense that decisions are not being made by spineless bureaucrats who are blind to the excesses of political correctness.
Lest we doubt the seriousness of the PC infection, consider this study, which:
"....questioned 483 poets, writers, actors and arts administrators. More than four out of five (84%) said that they never, rarely, or only sometimes felt free to give their opinions."
If not Trump, who?
The problem the Trumpian right has is, as I have said before, they are culturally retarded (why do I love that word so much?). Wading into the fray fearlessly is a good first step, but for it to be effective and long-lasting, it is going to have to have substance.
Another foray into cultural territory was an executive order of the previous Trump administration calling for “a unified style of sensible government building,” discussed in this previous post. The full text of the 2020 order is here. It makes interesting reading.
I think we, the public, tend to think that cultural change happens more or less organically like this: it is led by artists who, by dint of genius are “discovered,” gain the confidence of wealthy and powerful patrons winning their support for creative works that grow in ambition, giving us ever more sophisticated and larger cultural products, and so on and so forth, to the end that we live in a continuously updated and upgraded environment that we identify as our own as distinct from the past.
In fact, there are many levels of politics and influence at work, one of which is government. Who even was aware, before the Trump administration, that there were policies about what kind of buildings the government should build?
I am not the only one to have said that the right is weak on culture. There are many good reasons for that, the primary one being that art and design are considered tools of business, which pays the freight. But there are also bad reasons, like the attitude that culture doesn’t matter, or that it’s superficial, a thing for girls and gays.
While money is vitally at play in the world of culture, whether it is in control is debatable. When money talks, it often speaks behind closed doors or in a language most people don’t understand, and when that happens, the only thing that will move the crowd is a big stick.
One tends to think the right has no culture, or that the only culture it has is clichéed, nostalgic mush. There’s more to conservative aesthetics than meets the eye (as it were), but not much more. In a previous post, I discussed Aaron Renn’s four categories of conservative aesthetics. Nothing there amounts to a movement or anything of profound cultural import. It tends to prove my point that culture is a big blind spot for the right.
If not now, when?
One might justifiably think the right is anti-intellectual. It is not, of course, as anyone familiar with names like William Buckley or George Will will know.4 Among the younger generations, there are some with ambition, like Richard Hanania, who has written an interesting book on The Origins of Woke. There are many others on Substack similarly struggling with these matters.
Hanania recently seems to have had a change of heart, swinging left for fear, perhaps, of being caught on the wrong side of history. It’s interesting to witness his struggles, but he does understand the problem conservatives have with culture:
The problem is that it’s hard to be a right-wing intellectual these days. They don’t read serious books or articles. When they do find “intellectuals,” it’s not careful thinkers but monarchist LARPing and Stone Age LARPing performance artists.” -
Substack note, Apr 13, 2025
There’s an idea; perhaps the Kennedy Center might find some Stone Age performance artists to fill some of the gaps left by the wokeists who abandoned it as soon as they heard of the Trump coup, afraid to be called on the carpet to face the music.
But seriously, the Kennedy Center could take the advice of any of the thousands of YouTube creator self-help gurus out there: start anywhere but just start.
I’m pretty sure David Mamet, whose recent play/movie Henry Johnson I just reviewed, here, would be open to a phone call.
A fan has posted the entire Hamilton Musical, video taken on their phone: https://www.youtube.com/gHej85If2Rg
Donald Trump responded to Miranda’s show cancellation saying he never liked the show. Frankly, I doubt Hamilton himself would have liked Hamilton.
If you have ever visited a privately funded museum that has no or very limited government support, you will know what I mean. The McMichael Canadian Collection of Art, for example, founded by Robert and Signe McMichael, was grandly conceived to house their personal art collection. The log buildings seemed like a good idea at the time, but soon proved incapable of sustaining the temperature and humidity stability needed to conserve artworks. The McMichael’s pleaded for government support, which was denied until they relinquished control. Millions of public dollars subsequently have gone into ameliorating the building defects.
Another example from personal experience is the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway which I visited in the mid 1980s. The grass was uncut, the sidewalks were cracked and the building overall was shabby. The gallery consisted of one cavernous room. Built by the City of Oslo after Munch donated his vast body of work to it, and funded by movie theatre tax reveue, it is said to have been obsolete before the day it opened. In 2021 the collection was moved to a new site and building of considerably improved stature:
