Since returning to the White House 17 and one-half months ago, President Donald Trump has pursued a variety of makeover projects in and around Washington, DC —including renovations for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which he wants to rename the “Trump/Kennedy Center” (a move that has run into roadblocks in the federal courts). Many of Trump’s critics believe that he has created a great deal of unnecessary chaos at the venue, and one of those critics is Christina Smart — a freelance music/entertainment journalist who works there part-time.
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Smart details the Kennedy Center’s Trump-related woes in an article for Rolling Stone, noting how stressful things have been for employees.
“Prior to the Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center, Saturday evenings were bustling,” Smart explains in Rolling Stone. “It wasn’t unusual to have 10 to 12 shows in a day — where all nine venues on the campus were in use and sold out — which meant more than 7500 people would move through its hallowed halls. The Saturday evening of this past Memorial Day Weekend was very different. I stood alone in the Grand Foyer of the Kennedy Center having just finished a shift at the box office — a part-time position I’ve held since September 2019…. The only show that evening, ‘Shear Madness,’ was being performed upstairs in the Theater Lab to a crowd consisting mostly of a school group. Other shows originally scheduled for that date had long been cancelled.”
Smart points out that her Rolling Stone piece is the first time she has written about the Kennedy Center since she started working there. Although she has done plenty of concert reviews, Smart won’t review any shows at the Kennedy Center — as she wants to “avoid any signs of favoritism” or conflicts of interest. But in light of the venue’s Trump-era problems, she wanted to speak out.
“To say the last 16 months have been rough for employees here would be a severe understatement,” Smart laments. “While the beauty of this massive hall can typically distract me from the never-ending nonsense of the new regime, the emptiness that night was only a reminder of it.”
According to Marione Ingram, a 90-year-old Kennedy Center patron, Trump’s second presidency has been terrible for the venue.
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Ingram told Rolling Stone, “Now, there’s an atmosphere that’s really, really depressing. Everything that happened after (Trump) decided to take over was horrible.”
A Kennedy Center employee, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Rolling Stone, “I immediately knew that (the takeover) was going to be a disaster. I think a lot of people did.”
According to Smart, “sweeping dismissals” at the Kennedy Center “began almost immediately” after the Trump administration takeover.
“If an employee received a meeting request e-mail from human resources on a Friday that was also a payday,” Smart notes, “their time was up…. New appointees chosen by Trump or the newly named interim president Richard Grenell — typically, people with no prior experience connected to their new role — would arrive to fill those empty positions…. Our new boss, Richard Grenell, had been an ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term. He had no experience in arts management, concert promotion, or live entertainment — though he did state publicly that he was suited to the role because he was married to a former professional dancer.”
Smart is hoping that Congress will intervene with the Kennedy Center.
“For this slow desecration of the Kennedy Center to end,” the music journalist argues, “Congress needs to amend the charter with language that removes Trump along with his appointed board members and prevents presidential interference with the Kennedy Center from ever happening again. Only then can the hard work of repairing the Center’s reputation and restoring its artistic legacy — the one founded by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy — begin.”
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