Canadian author Louise Penny has joined the growing list of people from the arts and culture communities to cancel events or dissociate themselves from the Kennedy Center, after U.S. President Donald Trump took control of the historic Washington, D.C., institution.
Penny said on Friday she would not launch the 20th instalment in her series of books featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache at the venue, as planned.
“I was supposed to launch The Black Wolf at the Kennedy Center in DC, but in the wake of Trump taking over, I have pulled out,” she posted on Facebook, without specifying the date that event was to take place. “It was, of course, going to be a career highlight. But there are things far more important than that.”
Here’s a look at the current controversy surrounding the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington hosts more than 2,000 events and is the official residence of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera.
President Dwight Eisenhower initiated the process of establishing the centre in the late 1950s, and president Lyndon Johnson and Congress established that it would be named after the recently slain president Kennedy.
Since the late 1970s, the main theatre has hosted an event in December honouring a wide range of performers, over 250 at this point, who have contributed to American culture.
Recipients don’t have to be born in the U.S. or even citizens; U2 was honoured in 2022. Canadians honourees have included actor Hume Cronyn, musician Joni Mitchell and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.
Bill Cosby is the only person ever to be stripped of the honour, which very occasionally has gone to non-individuals, including Sesame Street and the Apollo Theatre in New York City.
What happened
Trump last week fired Kennedy Center chair David Rubinstein, the co-founder of global investment firm the Carlyle Group and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
“I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump said in a social media post that featured an altered image of the president in a conductor’s jacket.
Rubenstein had been due to step down in January, but last year it was announced his term was being extended to late 2026, with the centre acknowledging last year that a search for a new chair “took longer than expected.” He had originally been appointed to the Kennedy Centre board by former president George W. Bush.
Trump announced that he would serve as chair, and in a series of moves since, the board has been remade and populated with his allies. Ric Grenell, an advisor from the first Trump administration, was named interim executive director of the centre.
Are the changes unusual?
Mostly, yes.
“There is nothing in the center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center’s board,” the institution said in a statement last week.
It’s not unusual for a president to give such prestigious positions to allies at this or other posts. In fact, former secretary of state Antony Blinken and former press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had just been named to the board by Democratic president Joe Biden before he left office. They are among those who have been swept out by Trump’s changes.
In the past, the 36-member board has been generally split between people or appointees associated with the two main political parties.
But Trump’s handpicked board is almost entirely allies, donors and friends. They include his longtime adviser Dan Scavino, his current chief of staff Susie Wiles, Wiles’s mother, Pamela Gross, who is a former adviser to Melania Trump, and the wives of his vice-president and his commerce secretary nominee.
Elaine Chao, Trump’s former labour secretary and the wife of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, is also there, a year after Trump was criticized for using racist language to describe her in a social media post.
Why now?
The Kennedy Center receives just over 15 per cent of its funding from the federal government, and there is a history long before Trump of some Republican politicians objecting to what they view as state-sponsored art.
This is particularly the case when the art in question is provocative or controversial, such as when artist Andres Serrano in the early 1990s produced Piss Christ, a photo of a crucifix in a jar of Serrano’s urine, after receiving a $20,000 US grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Trump has not been overly specific in his objections but has said the centre is “not going to be ‘woke.'”
“NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” he said on social media this week.
Over thousands of performances in recent years, there are a handful of shows and events that have featured performers in drag.
Gender has been at the centre of a suite of executive orders Trump has signed early in his second administration.
The Washington Post reported that a page previewing an upcoming presentation of A Peacock Among Pigeons from the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) which holds performances at the centre, was no longer visible. The newspaper said it couldn’t confirm whether the concert, billed as a “celebration of love, diversity, and the vibrant spirit of the LGBTQ+ community,” had been cancelled.
As well, the creators of the Kennedy Center-produced children’s musical Finn, said this week that the tour was being cancelled. The title character was described on the kennedy Center’s website as “a young shark who just wants to be his true self. He loves sparkles and bright colours despite being a shark.”
A Kennedy Center spokesperson told Deadline.com in a statement that the cancellation of the tour was “a purely financial decision.”
Trump’s 1st term
It can only be speculated, but what transpired in Trump’s first term could also be a factor.
When Trump took office in 2017, legendary television producer Norman Lear and singer Lionel Richie debated not participating if the president attended. Lear cited what he saw as Trump’s disdain for the arts and humanities, while Richie mentioned a more vague sense of constant “controversies” in the first months of the presidency.
Cuba-born Gloria Estefan said she would attend, but that she hoped to engage Trump in a conversation about the value of immigrants, as Trump had by that time moved to ban asylum seekers from certain Muslim-majority countries.
But Trump didn’t attend.
“The President and First Lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said from the White House.
The president didn’t attend the next two years, and COVID-19 scuttled the 2020 ceremony.
The reaction
Award-winning television producer Shonda Rhimes resigned from the board in the wake of the changes, and opera star Renée Fleming announced she was leaving her role as special adviser to the centre.
Actor Issa Rae and band Low Cut Connie cancelled planned events, while pianist Ben Folds said he was stepping down as NSO artistic director.
A small group of protesters registered their displeasure in the U.S. capital on Wednesday, in a demonstration that took them outside the venue, according to a report from WUSA-9, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.
On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host tried to see a silver lining while envisioning future honours for Kid Rock, a Trump supporter, as well as Big Mouth Billy Bass, the singing animatronic fish.
“If he spends all his time programming concerts at the Kennedy Center, maybe he’ll spend less time dismantling the government,” said Meyers.
