Several entertainers and artists have severed ties with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since President Trump assumed chairmanship of the organization. This week, Brittany is joined by Paper Magazine writer Joan Summers and New York Times Magazine writer J Wortham to unpack the implications of a government-influenced national culture center, and the state of art in America today. Support public media and receive ad-free listening. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of the Kennedy Center discussion?
And by honoring artists from Aretha Franklin to Stephen Sondheim, the Kennedy Center has become a symbol of the best the American performing arts community has to offer. The center has historically been run by a bipartisan board of trustees, but last week, President Trump replaced 18 members of the Kennedy Center board with his own picks.
The new board then unanimously voted the president as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the first time in the center's history. For the record, President Trump, as of last week, said he had never been to the Kennedy Center and never attended the Kennedy Center honors during his first term as president.
In the aftermath of this whole upheaval at the Kennedy Center, several artists have cut ties with the institution, from TV and film producer Shonda Rhimes to opera superstar Renee Fleming. Dancers have protested outside the building, specifically citing their concerns about the institution's future.
And now with the nation's highest elected official at the helm of the nation's premier cultural institution that, again, it hosts lots of performances, but also provides scholarship, education, all these other opportunities outside the building, right? What does that signal for the broader arts community nationwide?
But first, Joan, for the average Joe or Junie, why is the Kennedy Center important? Because I'll be honest, before, you know, when I was just a wee one and I was living, you know, in Michigan, I didn't think about the Kennedy Center that much. But I do know it's a large and important organization. But explain to listeners why.
Yeah, it's funny. So much of my relationship to our, let's say, diva history here in the United States, something I concern myself with quite a bit, actually came from watching various Kennedy Center honor tributes of people like Shirley MacLaine, Stephen Sondheim. These are performances that uplift
and celebrate and sort of enshrine the greatest artists that we have who have contributed work to the arts across the field from music to the performing arts to writing.
And these institutions like the Kennedy Center, or if we're also thinking of other institutions under attack by Trump right now, like the National Archive, these are part of our living memory as a country, whether that's living memory through documents in the case of the archive or archives our living memory through the arts and sort of the story of the American arts.
And so for him to sort of infiltrate and attack and seek to dismantle these institutions, it is a great blow to the American arts community, even if it isn't something you think of as impacting your everyday life.
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Chapter 2: Why is the Kennedy Center considered important?
We're discussing kind of what this shift or this change means for us here in America. But I mean, thinking about the world, right? The U.S. exports a lot of things. One of our biggest exports is American culture, and that includes art, movies, TV, music. American culture has created a lot of soft power, right?
What does that power have the potential to look like in the hands of the Trump administration?
Yeah. So the Trump world and its many proponents from the tech overlords like Elon Musk to the anti-DEI, anti-woke crowds and spokespeople that surround him, that entire world I don't think has produced art of value. They've certainly produced messaging that is effective. They have produced pieces of propaganda through radio broadcasts and... their television programs on Fox News and stuff.
We've seen that be extremely effective. But when it comes to the movies, when it comes to music, I don't see anything being made that I could see being enshrined in a place like the Kennedy Center without being at least seen as laughable or at least coming off as laughable. Look at the inauguration. Look at how badly the arts programming at the inauguration went for them.
I will say it was a big improvement from the 2017 inauguration 100%. Was it Jackie Evancho was the big headliner? This time, Carrie Underwood is a step up. Yeah. I'm being serious.
No, 100%. But the reaction to Carrie Underwood, and I think her reaction to the reaction to her, I think does speak volumes.
You know the words help me out here. Oh, beautiful for spacious skies.
Yeah, she definitely faced her fair share of criticism before the performance. She had technical difficulties during the performance. And then after the performance, Carrie Underwood's streaming numbers went down by 6%.
From sea to shining sea.
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Chapter 3: How has Trump's leadership affected the Kennedy Center?
thinking about this in a larger sense, Jay, what questions is all this bringing up for you?
Is Trump going to be able to shift the cultural agenda of America as much as he's able to shift the political agenda? And even that we're still kind of like TBD, right? We are seeing some of these things like these massive layoffs in the federal government. We are seeing the rollback of DEI. I do think that the Kennedy Center specifically is not like an arbiter of
global taste in even American culture the way that he thinks it might be. I mean, it's a little bit LOL in some ways because the Kennedy Center, they're not known for cutting edge programming. The Kennedy Center was on my radar growing up, but it was never on my radar in the sense of I'm going here to be radicalized. I'm going here to have my mind blown. That was happening in Black Cat.
That was happening at the 930 Club. That was happening in Sankofa or like the black owned coffee shops. Right. Shout out DC institutions. I love it. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's where consciousness was being raised. It wasn't happening in the Kennedy Center.
So I think, you know, there's a real conversation to be had about the importance of these really entrenched cultural institutions right now and their effectiveness. I mean, culture in a way that moves globally has always started at the margins and moved inward, right? But I do think in the most immediate sense, what we probably will start to see is Joe Rogan having a show at Kennedy Center.
To that point, we are in a moment where we're seeing our government take aggressive executive action towards the vision of culture and American identity that they want to see, from anti-DEI orders to anti-trans orders. executive orders.
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Chapter 4: What does the shift in cultural agenda mean for artists?
And this is also happening as more and more of our major cultural institutions, whether it's the Grammys or Saturday Night Live, and even major artists that themselves have become institutions like Beyonce, thinking about her halftime performance on Christmas Day, or Kendrick Lamar, thinking about his halftime performance at the Super Bowl this year.
They're being met with mixed reactions, all of these institutions and major artists. They're when they try to comment on the moment. I mean, I wonder, in times like these, what is the role of the artist? And what do people, whether they want to admit it or not, want from artists in these moments?
I think that we're seeing a few different social forces converge all at once. First off, people are increasingly mistrustful of the powerful, whether they are the powerful that look like us or the powerful who stand against us. I think that that is something that is true. I also think that at the same time as that, the public's trust in and need for art has shifted dramatically since even
we three have been alive. I think that we live in a time more than ever where we see illiteracy rates are skyrocketing. We see that the relationship people have to the movies, how many people are buying albums, how many people are buying books, all of these arts institutions that have Mm-hmm.
Chapter 5: How does American culture influence global identity?
And I think that with different forces now that can sort of pierce through the medium of art, just speaking directly to people on TikTok or like news programming, I think that people have sort of bypassed like what art maybe was communicating and just gone right to people who are going to tell them what they want to hear, tell them what they want to believe, tell them who they are in a society and who to follow.
And I think that all of these things are kind of swirling around us and battling for power at this very moment.
Hmm. I would just add that I think there is a really big question about what culture is and what popular culture is. And I think that's why the Grammys end up mattering. I think that's why NFL halftime shows end up mattering because these are entry points that a lot of people have access to, right? If you aren't going to the movies anymore, if you're not reading books anymore, you're
Sure, you'll turn on the Super Bowl for a little bit, watch the commercials, watch the halftime show. I think those entry points become even more important in this time when the other kind of pillars of art and cultural engagement are...
But at the same time, I see things like Wicked, which is about fascism and it is about legislation being erected to exterminate otherness and all these themes that are directly linked to the moment that we're in being one of the most successful films of the year. Are people really thinking about those themes? Do we have the tools? Do we have the literacy?
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of government influence on art?
Do we have the media criticism to be able to sit with these ideas and think about them? Probably not. A lot of that we outsource, I think, to scrolling on social media. So I do think that's the part that worries me the most.
Jay, Joan, I have learned so much here. Thank you both so much. Yeah.
Thank you. Of course. Always a pleasure to go on my favorite podcast.
Well, as a thank you to the both of you, I'd like to teach you something by playing a game with you all. Can you stick around for a tiny bit longer? Love a game.
Oh my God, of course.
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Chapter 7: What cultural institutions are being challenged?
Yay. We'll be right back with a little game I like to call, What Did You Know? Stick around.
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All right, all right. We're going to play a little game I like to call, but did you know... Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story. And as I give you some background on the story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it. But don't worry, it's all multiple choice. And the first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point. Person with most points wins. And their prize is bragging rights.
Are y'all ready? Yeah, please. Yes. All right. To start, this week marks 57 years since the first broadcast of the beloved children's show, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. But the show, as we know it today, was not the first iteration of the puppet palooza. In what country did an early version called Mr. Rogers air? A, the United Kingdom. B, France. C,
Canada. The UK.
Feels like something they would do. Well, unfortunately for you both, the answer is Canada. Dang it. Whoa. Mr. Rogers aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC, for about four years, where several set pieces that would help define the American version, such as the trolley or the castle, were created. So there you go. All right, next question.
1,213?
Yeah. Joan says 1213. Jay, what say you?
I'll just say the 901. My brain can't do that math and I accept that reality. It's fine.
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