By Sky Pinkett
Staff Writer
Earlier this month, President Trump placed himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the first president to ever do so in the Center’s 54-year history.
The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. is a cultural and artistic center that features thousands of shows each year including operas, concerts, theater productions and more.
It was first proposed in the late 1950s by President Dwight Eisenhower in an effort to gain America’s respect on the global arts and culture stage in the same way it was respected for its economics and military. It was named after President John F. Kennedy after his assassination in 1963.
The Center has presented famous artists from multiple disciplines over the years, including Marian Anderson, Harry Belafonte, the Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, as well as given their prestigious honors to legacy acts such as Aretha Franklin, Robert Redford, Andrew Lloyd Webber and hundreds more.
According to Fox News, President Trump has taken an interest in the Center in order to ensure that the Center’s future performances are “good” and not “woke,” referring to some drag show performances that took place at the Center back in October.
Trump’s relationship to the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts originates back to his first term, when he became the first president to skip the Center’s honors ceremony for all four years of his presidency when some of the Center’s honorees refused to meet with him for a reception at the White House.
Now in his second term, Trump has put himself at the forefront of the Center by naming himself chairman. Some of his first executive actions as chairman included firing former President of the Kennedy Center Deborah Rutter. Rutter had served as the Center’s president for a decade.
Speaking to NPR, Rutter said, “I'm really, really, really sad about what happens to our artists, what happens on our stages and our staff who support them.”
Trump also fired former Board Chairman David M. Rubenstein, as well as other unspecified board members who he feels "do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture."
According to MSNBC, the majority of the board has been replaced by advisors and supporters of the Trump administration, such as White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, country star Lee Greenwood, Second Lady Usha Vance, wife of New England Patriots owner Dana Blumberg and others.
This contrasts the Center’s tradition of having an evenly split board of Democrats and Republicans in order to ensure balanced representation.
In the time since these changes, many have protested Trump naming himself chairman. On Feb. 17, 34 dancers spent 30 minutes performing a piece by choreographer Pina Bausch around the Center’s perimeter.
According to NPR, the performers were mainly concerned that the diversity of the Center’s dance program, which had been focused on Euro-centric ballet up until recent years, are threatened by this new administration shake up.
Their concerns are not entirely unfounded, as the Trump administration accused the Center of "subsidizing Chinese Communist Party propaganda" by featuring a string of performances by the National Ballet in China back in January.
Comparisons could be made to when the Center featured the Bolshoi Ballet from Russia back in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. At the time, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at the Center, saying, "Art knows no national boundaries. Genius can speak in any tongue, and the entire world will hear it and listen."
Besides canceled performances by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. and actress and writer Issa Rae (both of which the Center claims to have been canceled before the change in leadership), Trump’s further plans for the Center remain to be seen.
