Trump Targets the Arts
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 17, 2025
There’s been an appropriate amount of fuss for Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Arts as a vivid demonstration of personal pique, bravado and misplaced priority.
It’s easy to see the effects getting worse across the arts world.
Seeking control over a premier national cultural pearl out of his anti-woke streak is a sign both of personality warp and a misplaced desire to run everything in our lives in a way that maximizes adoration of himself.
Unlike cutting off international humanitarian aid, no one is going to die from this move. But it is going to hurt a lot of creatives in the arts as the lessons of the powerful to bully and insist that everything in life be an extension of Trump spread to other venues and cities.
From theater to comedy, performing arts like dance and music to the visual arts, the arts reflect an innate human need for individual expression, often in reaction to established centers of power, often in “dissent,” often in ways that demand engagement and “critical thinking” that is the antithesis of what Trump demands or preaches. The themes that drive serious artmaking are born of discomfort, and the purpose of the effort is to prod a second look at ourselves and what brought us to this day.
To the degree that civilizations are judged on the creativity of their cultural lives, the brash Trump move to plunk himself and a hand-picked board of his White House team members as the arbiters of what should pass as acceptable art and entertainment reflects a civilization afraid of its own people.
Artist Cancellations
Already, we are seeing cancellations of performances at the Kennedy Center by individual performers or groups who see intellectual danger ahead. What Trump seeks is a veto of performers whose message he doesn’t like, whether for the annual awards show it sponsors or for a drag event that he highlighted in his announcements.
Trump himself, who apparently has never attended an event at the Kennedy Center, is talking about re-shaping the calendar of who is allowed to perform, seeking conformity with an anti-woke agenda that no one really understands.
Do his anti-diversity ideas cancel performers who are not White or just those who mock the pretensions of an overly boastful president? Our comedian friend W. Kamau Bell, whose live performances look critically at Trump, government, racism and more, was wondering aloud on the internet whether his Kennedy Center date would proceed (It did).
Among the most thoughtful reactions has been from Philp Kennicott, art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, who sees this overnight beheading of leadership at the Kennedy Center as reflecting an enormous coercive power over how America expresses itself.
For openers, presidents in the past have supported the arts through creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other organizations. All of that is now endangered by massive budget cuts being pursued by Trump and Elon Musk.
Other than during the Trump years, the White House has been its own venue, featuring performing groups. He hasn’t cared about arts other than as music to fuel a campaign arena crowd.
Powers of Coercion
What we see now, Kennicott reminds us, is that Trump has potentially enormous powers of coercion to bring against artists, venues and nonprofits from tax code to visas for artists and novel interpretations of antidiscrimination laws.
Team Trump can’t stand seeing a portrait of Gen. Mark Milley in the Pentagon or Barack Obama in the White House. How are we going to trust that he will value a play reflecting a plot about migrant workers or the next Hamilton? The National Symphony Orchestra has removed a performance set for Pride Month with pieces highlighting a “celebration of love, diversity, and the vibrant spirit of the LGBTQ+ community.”
It is the Kennedy Center’s job — as it is the Smithsonian’s, or the National Gallery of Art, or lots of other arenas — to reflect a “diversity” of what all of America performs. Trump’s version is that if federal money is involved, diversity is bound by what Trump believes or likes. It’s how he views history, business, deal-making, tariffs, immigration and education.
The head of the Federal Communications Commission is threatening broadcasters and Hollywood about what they’re airing. The NEA now says grant applications for next year will drop any requirement to program for underserved communities and would prioritize projects celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary.
We’re seeing lots of institutions from hospitals to performance venues and broadcasters acquiesce, whether from fear or panic, to abandon equity programs far beyond employee hiring, promotion and training and into the heart of their programming without a clear map of where all this is headed.
Beyond DEI
Kennicott importantly asks, “What if this isn’t about DEI but is rather a wholesale attack on the nonprofit world, with the aim of crippling or silencing groups that have traditionally been independent of government coercion?”
Trump and a board that includes Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House staff and the wife of the vice president, apparently think they know what the Kennedy Center should be presenting about the fullness of American creativity.
The leap to think that this could affect everything from programming to the cost of underwriting insurance or transportation costs for museums based on what some board member thinks might fit into a Trump world view.
What is the Smithsonian Institution supposed to do to make an entire National Museum of African History and Culture match Trump’s agenda? Or the National Memorial for Peace and Justice with its history of lynchings in Birmingham, Ala.?
MAGA successes at attacking our universities and educational systems over what can be taught and what books can be available show how fragile these concepts of academic freedom. The very definition of nonprofits and taxes have been the subject of court rulings, even as Vice President JD Vance has attacked the Ford Foundation as “investing in the racial division” of the country.
The possible chilling effects abound.
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