The Life and, for Now, the Death of the Kennedy Center
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Hey, it's Anna Martin from the New York Times. What if I told you you'll never have to hear this line again?
Wherever you get your podcasts.
Yeah, no, I actually can't tell you that. But you know what I can tell you? A place I think you might want to go. It's the Shows tab in the New York Times app. The place to listen to and now watch full episodes of New York Times shows. The shows tab. Find it in the New York Times app. Explore the shows tab and follow a show today.
Oh yeah. You know, this is what they play when the performance is about to start. Yes. You're calling people in.
So a few months ago I took a tour of the Kennedy Center with a tour guide there. Oh, can I get your name? Oh, Sandy Weisswasser. Okay. A volunteer named Sandy Weisswasser. Wow, I gotta spell that out. W E I S W She's eighty seven years old. She's a huge bundle of energy. And for the last twenty years, she's given tours every single Monday.
Are you an artist yourself? Am I an artist? No, I play the piano though. You do and I and I care a lot about the arts. I mean I love ballet and opera and
before President Trump took over the Kennedy Center, Sandy's tours were always packed. But then he took over, made a lot of changes, and people stopped coming. And so on the day that I was there, the center was empty, and I was the only person on Sandy's tour.
So this foyer apparently is one of the
En as she walked me through the center, the largest
gift is this marble. Which comes
from Carrara,
Italy. Beautiful chandelier. It's done by Dale Chahuli.
It was clear how proud she was of the place.
I like the undulating quality of it.
And how much she reveres it.
No bed seat in the place. No, it doesn't look
like
it.
But at some point in the tour it occurred to me that she was speaking in the past tense.
You know, that's the other thing when I give my tours now, do I give 'em present tense or past tense?
What is the history of the Kennedy Center before President Trump’s involvement?
It's very hard. Yeah, what words to use for v my verbs anyway.
And the tour she was giving was kind of a tour of wreckage, and what she was explaining and all of her memories started to sound a lot to me like a eulogy.
So I mean all these little things about all the performers that are n no longer here is very sad.
And it also became clear that in Sandy's mind there was one person responsible for all that had happened to the Kennedy Center.
I mean this place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded. Now it's very empty. And that was President Trump.
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babarro. This is the Daily.
Today. The life and for the time being, the death of the Kennedy Center. My colleague, Elizabeth Williamson, brings us the story of how President Trump decided to take over and now shut down. Вашингтон'с бігіст і мост селебрад хомфіарц. It's Friday, september twenty fifth.
Elizabeth. Welcome back to the Daily. Michael, it's great to join you. You have been watching the Kennedy Center shut down for months, first gradually and then abruptly, when it literally closed its doors about 10 days ago. So we're coming to you for what feels a bit like a post-mortem here, to understand why President Trump has closed this place down. And I think Any good postmortem has to begin with the question of motivation. How do you think about his motivation here?
I think you have to go back to President Trump's first term. Remember, this was a really brutal election with a surprise result. He comes into the White House. He had been roundly rejected by Cultural elites in New York City, the epicenter of the nation's cultural life. And he comes into Washington where the center of the cultural life in the Capitol is the Kennedy Center. Right. And he's thinking, I'm the president now. So surely he'll be welcomed more broadly by the culture once he's in the White House. But instead, that rejection really continued. And there was probably no better example in that first year than the annual Kennedy Center honors, which is the Kennedy Center's biggest night of the year.
Mm, and what form does that rejection take?
So three of the five honorees in twenty seventeen said that they either would not come to the White House for the presentation of the actual medals before the ceremony at the Kennedy Center, or they were considering not coming.
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