Kennedy Center to Shut Down and Implement Operational Changes

Institutional

Takeover and Shutdown The Kennedy Center was taken over in early 2025, followed by an announcement in February to shut down the nation's cultural center for two years.

This decision came amid artist cancellations, shrinking audiences, and staff changes. A former staffer described scrambling to handle artwork responsibilities after receiving a layoff notice on March 26. From the moment the staffer received a calendar invitation for a meeting with human resources, they knew they had to scramble.

Shortly after the shutdown announcement, the center’s president told the staffer to “get rid of everything” in the permanent collection. Although the staffer had slow-walked this demand for several weeks by pretending to wait on another colleague for updates, they now had only two hours to tie up loose ends.

The staffer hurriedly emailed the families of deceased figures associated with busts and installations, such as a bust outside the Opera House and a wood-carved wall depicting instruments mentioned in the Jewish Bible in the historic Israeli Lounge.

They had been anxious about the coming closure, and the staffer told them they would no longer be able to give them updates about the artworks. For months, colleagues and the staffer had been hearing chatter about a shutdown, but they suspected it wasn’t just because of problems with the physical structure (which certainly had issues but could have been upgraded piecemeal, without needing to close the entire complex), but also because a year of tumult had left the organization barely able to function artistically and financially.

Staff

Experiences and Projects Prior to the shutdown announcement, the staffer pitched a public art project for the semiquincentennial, involving ephemeral happenings on the National Mall dedicated to virtues.

Like much of the philanthropic world after the 2024 election, the private foundation that was sponsoring the project had reassessed its priorities and withdrawn its funding. One of the president’s deputies reached out to the staffer. The staffer was wary at first.

For Washington’s arts community, the Kennedy Center takeover had felt like an assault—the old leadership had been purged, and the president had brought in people with political ties. The staffer told prospective employers that they had never voted for Trump. They assured the staffer that it wasn’t a problem.

After being told that personal political views wouldn’t preclude employment—that, in fact, it was preferable that the Kennedy Center’s new hires not exclusively be loyalists—the staffer responded that they would need to have full creative control of exhibitions and programming. Ultimately, the staffer decided the Kennedy Center was too important an institution to abandon.

It’s one of the most prominent venues through which we present a national cultural identity to the world, and taking part in that mission was an unmissable opportunity. The staffer earnestly believed they would have a chance to develop programs with wide appeal, centered on themes related to collective identity and set against the backdrop of a historic national birthday.

While sympathizing with those choosing to boycott it, simply bashing the institution for the sake of virtue signaling seemed like the wrong move for anyone who professed to care about the arts.

And if ever asked to do something that violated conscience, the staffer promised themselves they would quit. Maybe the staffer was naive, but as critics compared the institution to a burning building, they resolved to run toward the fire to save what they could. Most friends in the city’s arts community were surprised by the decision.

But after the staffer explained their reasoning, they largely expressed cautious optimism. The outlier was a dear friend who told the staffer they were the equivalent of a Nazi collaborator.

The staffer was excited to work and started to develop three exhibitions, each devoted to a revolution in American artistic production that had global impacts: one about trailblazing musicians, another about the legacy of street art, and a third showcasing American artists using artificial intelligence, robotics, and augmented reality in their work.