Kennedy Center Bans Concert

[arpeggio]

Reforming the National Zoo's cellists:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/30/national-zoo-trump-executive-order/

   

[T. D.]

Slightly off-topic, but since the above (paywalled) was apparently an April Fools column:

The Challenge of the Satire-Proof Presidency

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-21/can-comedy-rise-to-the-occasion-of-a-second-trump-term

[arpeggio]

I know that this has nothing to do with the Kennedy Center but it is an example of another assault on the arts by the current administration:

https://www.amsmusicology.org/neh-funding-cuts/#:~:text=On%202%20April%202025%20at%2011%3A30pm%20ET%2C%20the,grants%20had%20been%20terminated%2C%20effective%201%20April%202025.

https://www.amsmusicology.org/civicrm/mailing/view/?id=10894

[steve ridgway]

I know that this has nothing to do with the Kennedy Center but it is an example of another assault on the arts by the current administration:

https://www.amsmusicology.org/neh-funding-cuts/#:~:text=On%202%20April%202025%20at%2011%3A30pm%20ET%2C%20the,grants%20had%20been%20terminated%2C%20effective%201%20April%202025.

https://www.amsmusicology.org/civicrm/mailing/view/?id=10894

Get mailing all the orchestras in the US @Karl Henning so they have something American to play .

[T. D.]

I'm gonna apply for a grant to make velvet Elvis paintings. All materials sourced from USA only.

[relm1]

This is partially off topic (but not that far) that JD Vance was quoting Nixon saying, "Professors are the enemy of the people".  To me, the arts and scholars being the enemy are sort of close.  Doesn't it seem you're on the wrong side of history if you believe arts, education, free speech should be restricted/eliminated?  That these are the enemy of the people?  Or is it that those are the enemies of authoritarians since they tend to challenge others and question authority through scholarship and critical thinking?  What is the responsibility of the arts in times like this where the arts and scholars are the targets?

[T. D.]

This is partially off topic (but not that far) that JD Vance was quoting Nixon saying, "Professors are the enemy of the people".  To me, the arts and scholars being the enemy are sort of close.  Doesn't it seem you're on the wrong side of history if you believe arts, education, free speech should be restricted/eliminated?  That these are the enemy of the people?  Or is it that those are the enemies of authoritarians since they tend to challenge others and question authority through scholarship and critical thinking?  What is the responsibility of the arts in times like this where the arts and scholars are the targets?

I think it's ethically/morally unambiguous that arts, educators, scholars have at least the right (and I personally believe an obligation) to speak up. And there still exists a First Amendment (for a while, at least).

The question is more one of whether governments have a duty/obligation (whatever that means) to fund the arts (particularly), scholarship, education, etc. And/or whether political strings should be attached to such funds.

[Mandryka]

Re the US Government and the arts, it has inspired one artist to create this fabulous drawing.

[T. D.]

Thanks. An excellent one [I can no longer stand the word "very" for related reasons, so try to avoid "v. good" and related expressions], though the point took an embarrassingly long time to sink in.

[arpeggio]

Another article from the Washington Post concerning the cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/04/07/neh-grants-canceled-cuts/

[Mandryka]

Thanks. An excellent one [I can no longer stand the word "very" for related reasons, so try to avoid "v. good" and related expressions], though the point took an embarrassingly long time to sink in.

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe

[arpeggio]

Latest Kennedy Center news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2025/04/18/kennedy-center-layoffs/

[arpeggio]

Latest Kenndy Center news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2025/04/25/kennedy-center-classical-music-american-arts/

[ritter]

Latest Kenndy Center news:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2025/04/25/kennedy-center-classical-music-american-arts/

You need to be a subscriber to the WaPo to read that news... 

[arpeggio]

Sorry about that.  I copied out the article and pasted it.

The Kennedy Center's future will shape the history of American arts
The nation's premier arts institution has played a key part in telling a new history of American classical music. Can it continue?

April 25, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDTToday at 6:00 a.m. EDT
6 min




20
A conceptual illustration depicts an orchestra conductor's hands in front of the audience. The wave of the conductor's baton releases music notes in a flag-like shape, featuring the American colors of red, white, and blue.
(Illustration by Alla Dreyvitser/The Washington Post; iStock)

Column by Michael Andor Brodeur
"If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential," President John F. Kennedy wrote. "I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist."

Kennedy penned these remarks as part of his acceptance of an honorary degree from Amherst College in October 1963. Roughly a year into launching an ambitious $30 million fundraising campaign to construct a world-class National Cultural Center — one that would require bipartisan support (as well as a deadline extension) — the function of the arts in America weighed heavily on Kennedy's mind.

But in the headier space of his speech, Kennedy was also mulling over the role of the artist, a figure whom he called the "last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state." And he considered the ways the arts create history by confronting the present, providing an engine for cultural change.

One month after Kennedy delivered this speech, he was assassinated. And two months after that, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation designating the proposed arts center as a "living memorial" to be known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — i.e. the place of the artist in America had Kennedy's name on it.

His words from Amherst are chiseled into the center's walls — though lately, little about the Kennedy Center seems set in stone.

A round of layoffs across the Kennedy Center's government, media and marketing staffs this past week were just the most recent shake-ups at the center since President Donald Trump effectively appointed himself as chair and installed Richard Grenell as interim executive director. The sitting board was dismissed and replaced. The entire social impact department was eliminated along with its programming, including the ambitious commissioning initiative "The Cartography Project." Waves of artist cancellations — including an anticipated run of "Hamilton" and an appearance by Issa Rae — prompted the center to release a statement clarifying that it had canceled performances only because of "lack of sales or artist availability."

Trump and Co. want the place more profitable, less "woke" (it was?) and more closely aligned with the administration's "Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture," as Trump called it on Truth Social.


Marc Bamuthi Joseph, seen in 2019, headed the Kennedy Center's social impact team, which was recently eliminated. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
At operational and ideological levels, the shake-ups at the center have inspired questions about its present health (with staffers pushing back on the new leaders' diagnosis) and speculation about its future vitality. For his part, Grenell has trained his public focus on the financial woes of the Kennedy Center, promoting a "common sense" approach to programming with an emphasis on attendance and ticket sales.


But Trump's executive orders targeting programs that fall under the "DEI" umbrella (for diversity, equity and inclusion) point to a larger desire to more broadly recalibrate the role of the arts in America, prioritizing spirited patriotism over institutional critique. (In 2025, a presidential affirmation such as Kennedy's that "any true artist" is defined by "a concern for justice" feels all but unimaginable.)

In remarks to reporters in the Oval Office upon appointing Grenell, Trump signaled a clear divergence from the mission laid out in the Kennedy Center's authorizing statute requiring programs and policies that "meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States."

"We're going to make sure that it's good," he said, "and it's not going to be woke."

This anti-woke prescription won't just affect what artists and performances come to the center's stages; it will reshape the story of American performing arts that the Kennedy Center has spent decades telling. After all, the Kennedy Center is more than a venue, it's a "living monument" — a place where the story of American culture plays out onstage. Whatever happens at the Kennedy Center becomes part of the history it exists to preserve. That's the part that worries me.


The late composer George Walker, whose "sinfonias" were performed as part of the National Symphony Orchestra's "Beethoven and American Masters" series. (Mike Derer/AP)
Since the great reset of the pandemic, the Kennedy Center has served as one of the primary venues for the slow recovery of American arts, including a reconstruction of their history.


Like many orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra has taken steps over the past few years to diversify its repertoire, commissioning new works by composers including Carlos Simon, Adolphus Hailstork, Tania León, Billy Childs, Anna Clyne and Julia Wolfe. (According to recent statistics from the League of American Orchestras, works by women and composers of color account for 22.6 percent of U.S. orchestras' programming, up from 4.5 percent in 2015-2016.)

But under maestro Gianandrea Noseda, the NSO has also attempted to fill in some historical blanks. His "Beethoven and American Masters" series with the NSO in 2023 situated a cycle of the composer's well-known symphonies alongside a companion cycle of George Walker's alluring "sinfonias" (composed between 1984 and 2016) as well as William Grant Still's 1937 "Symphony No. 2 in G Minor" (his "Song of a New Race").

Over the past few years, the NSO has also offered me some of my first encounters with the music of composers who have only recently found their way into the repertoire through scholarship and a mix of fortitude and fortune: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and some of my favorite performances of the recently rediscovered work of Florence Price. The Fortas Chamber Music series has also contributed to a larger history project, hosting performances of the all-Black-and-Latino Sphinx Symphony Orchestra and Sphinx Virtuosi, mixing contemporary works by immigrant composers with restored gems from Scott Joplin and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.


American composer Florence Beatrice Price, whose work was recently rediscovered. (University of Arkansas Libraries)
And beyond the in-house institutions at the Kennedy Center, outside organizations such as Choral Arts, the Washington Chorus, Washington Performing Arts and others have contributed to a culture of historical exploration and expansion at the Kennedy Center. Nothing radical, just a relatively gentle zoom-out, a widening of the frame that allows for a broader landscape.


Logistics and scheduling move slowly in the performing-arts world. It will probably take a few seasons for the programming at the Kennedy Center to reveal any hints of ideological tilt or cautious omission. But whatever makeover awaits in the future, it feels important that we remain mindful of these historical repairs and restorations that have only just begun. Abandoning this work is a choice to leave the story of American music incomplete.

In the same speech at Amherst, Kennedy warned that a nation that "disdains the mission of art" invites, in the words of Robert Frost, "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

If the goal is to bring more people into the Kennedy Center, a commitment to embracing and preserving a history that makes room for everyone is just common sense.

[ritter]

Thanks for the above, @arpeggio !

[arpeggio]

Latest assault on the arts:

Trump proposes eliminating the NEA and NEH as arts grants are canceled
Trump's proposed budget follows his attempts to reshape the nation's arts landscape and defund institutions.

May 3, 2025 at 3:34 p.m. EDTToday at 3:34 p.m. EDT
3 min

By Samantha Chery
President Donald Trump's budget proposal would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, reviving his failed first-term attempts to scrap the grantmaking agencies as he moves to reshape the nation's artistic and cultural landscape.

The proposed cuts come even after the NEH slashed its workforce and the NEA canceled grants in compliance with Trump's directives to reduce the federal workforce and shut down diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The tentative budget plan also targets the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as part of $163 billion in proposed cuts across much of the federal government.

Established by Congress in 1965, the NEA serves as the largest funder of the arts and arts education for communities across the country, primarily through grantmaking. The NEH helps fund humanities programs by supporting museums, libraries, universities and public television and radio stations. Since Trump returned to office, he has enacted and proposed drastic changes to both agencies to fit his agenda for the arts, which includes extinguishing efforts to extend the reach of the arts to diverse communities and shifting funding to causes he deems more patriotic, including celebrations for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In February, the NEA announced the cancellation of its Challenge America grant — reserved for projects supporting underserved communities — and the introduction of the Grants for Arts Projects — for initiatives that "celebrate the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America."

Trump's 2026 fiscal year budget proposal must be approved by Congress and signed by him before it can be implemented. Shortly after it was released, the NEA reportedly rescinded grants for several theaters, citing Trump's artistic priorities, according to the American Theatre magazine.

Last month, after the administration eyed plans to make NEH cuts, at least 1,200 NEH grants were canceled, according to the National Humanities Alliance. Many NEH employees also received reduction-in-force notices about a week later.

Then, NEH acting chair Michael McDonald told the National Council of Humanities that some funds from the NEH and NEA would be repurposed to pay for the National Garden of American Heroes and next year's Declaration of Independence celebrations.

Trump initially announced his plans for the garden during his first term, signing two executive orders related to the project, but both orders were rescinded by President Joe Biden.

Trump has unsuccessfully fought to defund the NEA and NEH for years. In 2017, he proposed nixing the 2018 fiscal year federal funding for the agencies, along with the similarly targeted library and public broadcasting agencies, threatening the future of thousands of arts and culture programs across the country. At the time, the proposed budget for the four agencies accounted for about 0.02 percent of the overall federal budget.

Congress ultimately rejected the plan, along with Trump's similar attempts to drastically reduce funding for the programs in the 2019, 2020, and 2021 fiscal year budgets. Instead, NEA and NEH funding increased with bipartisan support throughout Trump's first term.

Janay Kingsberry, Anne Branigin, Travis M. Andrews and Peggy McGlone contributed to this report.

[relm1]

Worth a read.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/project-2025-blueprint-canceling-american-democracy

[T. D.]

Worth a read.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/project-2025-blueprint-canceling-american-democracy

Thanks, but the date on the story is 16 July 2024.
The details of Project 2025 were known long before the election and received ample coverage. Everything has been happening according to the script.

[arpeggio]

I have a pdf copy of Project 2025.

I just checked it out and it does not contain anything concerning the arts.