Until a few weeks ago, the latest news to get out of Kennedy center In Washington, DC, was its annual celebration of notable American artists.
This has changed since Donald Trump’s return.
During the first month of his second mandate, the president oust the management of the Arts Institution, completed the board of directors of his supporters and announced that he had been elected president of the council – unanimously. Some artists responded by canceling the appearances.
In a statement this month at the Wall Street Journal, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, “said:” The Kennedy Center has learned that if you wake up, you will get broke. President Trump and the members of his new board of directors are devoted to the reconstruction of Kennedy Center in a flourishing and very respected institution where all Americans and visitors around the world can take advantage of the arts with regard to the great history and American traditions. »»
What has the Kennedy Center and for how long has it been?
Supported by government money and private donations and attracting millions of visitors each year, the center is a 100 -foot high -foot complex with a concert hall, an opera and a theater, as well as a conference room, meeting spaces and a millennial scene which was the site for free shows.
The very origins of the center are bipartite.
It was designed for the first time in the late 1950s, during the administration of the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who supported a Congress bill led by Democrats calling for a “national culture center”. In the early 1960s, Democratic President John F. Kennedy launched a fundraising initiative, and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed a 1964 bill to rename the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Kennedy had been murdered the previous year.
Construction began in 1965 and the center officially opened six years later, with a first by Leonard Bernstein Massotherwise known as Mass: a play for singers, players and dancers.
Who played Kennedy Center?
The center has long been a showcase for theater, music and dramatic performances, with artists from Paul Taylor Dance Company to a joint concert by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Other protruding facts have included the annual Mark Twain prize for comedy, with laureates such as Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Bob Newhart, and the annual ceremony of the Kennedy center honoring exceptional artists, more recently Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt and The Grateful Dead, among others.
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The presidents systematically attended the honors ceremony, even in the presence of artists who did not agree with them politically. The spirit of good humor was well captured in 2002, during the first mandate of republican president George W. Bush, when Steve Martin paid tribute to Honouree Paul Simon. Martin digressed in a tangent on hacked music recordings and joked that he had been approached by Bush to get Bootlegs from Barbra Streisand, an eminent democrat.
“It was nice to be a citizen,” added Martin, while Bush and others laughed in response.
Why does Trump focus on Kennedy Center now?
Trump mainly ignored the center during his first mandate, becoming the first president to skip regularly the honors. An Honouree, producer Norman Lear, had threatened not to attend if Trump was there.
Reflecting his global approach to power, Trump was much more aggressive and proactive in his second mandate, citing Drag Show performance at the center as a reason to transform it entirely.
“In my direction, we are going to do Kennedy Center at Washington DC, again,” he wrote on his social media website earlier this month. “I decided to immediately dismiss several individuals from the board of directors, including the president, who does not share our vision of a golden age in arts and culture.”
Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center website still includes a transition to the basic mission, which endeavors to “ensure that the education and awareness programs and awareness policies of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States.”
Also listed on the site is a new project entitled “Promise of Us”, for which “the public is invited to submit an artistic self -portrait to be part of a virtual wall of faces expressing the myriad of diversity of American peoples and the promise of the future of America. This constant expansion mosaic will be presented on the center website and social channels. »»
Trump expelled the president of the outgoing board of directors David Mr. Rubenstein, PhilanthropE and owner of Baltimore Orioles. He now chairs a board of directors which, by tradition, was divided between people named democratic and republican, but is now mainly republican, with recent additions, including the star of the Lee Greenwood campaign and the chief of staff of the White House Susie Wiles.
The president of Kennedy Center, Deborah F. Rutter, provoked by Rubenstein in 2014, was dismissed shortly after the reshuffle of the Board of Directors. Trump replaced it, provisionally, with diplomat Richard Grenell, who was an American ambassador to Germany during the president’s first mandate.
“I am really, really, really sad about what happens to our artists, what is happening on our stages and our staff who support them,” said Rutter during a recent interview with NPR. “The Kennedy Center is supposed to be a lighthouse for the arts of all of America across the country.”
What was the fallout?
The fallout is unprecedented. Kennedy Center consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming have resigned and actor Issa Rae and author Louise Penny canceled appearances. During a concert last weekend which took place as planned, the singer-songwriter Victoria Clark wore a t-shirt by reading “Anti Trump AF”.
Tuesday, singer-musician Rhiannon Giddens said that she cancels a May show at Kennedy Center and moving it in another DC place. “The Kennedy Center Show was reserved long before the current administration decided to take up this previously non -political institution.”
Another controversy is possible. The schedule of next month includes “RIOT! Funny women get upA special comedy event to celebrate the month of women’s history. Conan O’Brien must receive Twain Award in an All-Star event which will probably include jokes on the president. (O’Brien representatives did not respond to requests for comments.)
The Center should also accommodate “Eureka Day”, a play centered on an icbs epidemic, a sensitive subject with the confirmation of the vaccine criticism Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.