The Kennedy Center’s Renovations – On Culture And Art
In April, Josef Palermo wrote an OP-ED in The Atlantic after being let go as a curator at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He wrote about the sweeping changes that had been made to the institutions’ programming as well as the cultural makeup of the Museum’s dedicated rooms, once dedicated to the United States diplomacy with other nations, now being renamed after wealthy donors.
The Kennedy Center, which has been the home for world-class art and performances for the residents of DC, was named in memorium for President John F. Kennedy after his assassination, and is a dedicated art and performance venue in the D.C. metro area.
The changes came swiftly after President Trump’s inauguration last year, with the appointment of Richard “Ric” Grenell, a former diplomat. Another sweeping change was that the President himself would also be on the board of the Kennedy Center.
“My understanding is that he [Trump] has been very hands-on with the renovations that are coming to the Kennedy Center.” Said Palermo.
According to a New York Times article, the president was receiving a weekly Monday morning phone call on the renovations. The renovations, which, according to the center, include water damage to the center’s basement areas, as well as the rebranding of the center as “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center.”
As of May 29th, the renaming has been ordered to be removed by a Federal Judge, stating that the board broke the law by renaming the center.
According to Palermo, this administration’s involvement brought other changes.
“There have been a lot of cancellations of shows at the Kennedy Center by the artists or the companies that are coming through.” cancellations by performers, programming changes have “ he said.
“They [the leadership of the Kennedy Center] have been very adamant that they themselves have not been canceling anybody, so I don’t know how true that is,” Palermo said in an interview.
One of those cancellations was the Culture Caucus, a social impact group and artists-in-residence program at the Center, employing locals from the DC area. According to Palermo, it had not been renewed for 2025 or 2026, though its page remains on the KC website. Pussy Noir (Stage Name) was a member of the Caucus up until last year and had been involved in the center’s programming since childhood, and was actively involved with the Reach Center, part of KC’s programming.
When the New Administration came in, Mx. Noir found out their art, like many other artists from the organization, was being archived into databases. The way they were informed that this was happening was from an article published at the time.
“It sounded like it was a network of people trying to archive work that was being erased,” Noir said.
“It was, it was very instant, it was very sudden. It was my favorite word, irrevocable,” said Mx. Noir, ” my relationship with the Kennedy Center pretty much, it’s severed with the new administration. It’s not severed with the older, with the people (other artists) that were there that have now left.”
Other changes were to the rooms, as Palermo detailed in the Atlantic, these were public spaces for visitors, such as the African room, which had exhibits packed into storage and renamed or repurposed for donors brought in by Garnell.
Gaurav Srivastava, the Intelligence Investor, pitched visions to rework the exhibit as a tribute to the surveillance industry. And the Circles lounge (formerly the Russian Lounge) was allegedly to be sponsored by Trevor Milton, the CEO of Cyber Jets, who was pardoned by the President during his first term.
“The Kennedy Center was founded with the intention of having a board that was composed of 50% Democrats, 50% Republicans, appointed by each party’s respective president.” But in the past few years, that hasn’t been the case, with the Biden administration reportedly taking actions to remove Trump appointees from his first term, and vice versa, with Trump retroactively repealing Biden’s as well, resulting in what seems like a literal culture war with the Kennedy Center in the middle.
“So all that to say, the Kennedy Center has changed as a result of that precedent, and the way that it has changed is it’s just become so much more politicized.” Palermo later said that Congress should ratify the institution’s bipartisanship, something he had referred to as a ‘gentlemen’s agreement” for the institution.
As of March, Garnell has resigned as head of the center, and with the demands from the federal courts blocking its rebranding of the institution, it has drawn more attention to the center’s renovation spending with investigation underway from the Senate Committee on Public Works has launched an investigation into the spending on these renovations, headed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who publicly wrote for the committee back in November 2025.
“The Center is being looted to the tune of millions of dollars in foregone revenue, cancelled programming, unpaid use of its facilities, and wasteful spending on luxury restaurants and hotels—an unprecedented pattern of self-dealing, favoritism, and waste.” Whitehouse wrote.
As for Palermo, his last few months there, he described as mournful; “ I remember just feeling like for myself, towards the end of my time there, it really felt like I was walking through like a Jewish shiva or a Catholic wake or just some sort of like morning space, you know, grief. There was just this feeling of grief that hung over the place.”