Performing Arts
Trump’s name must come off of the Kennedy Center, judge rules
National
Staff told to remove President Trump from the Kennedy Center’s name
After multiple setbacks in his effort to remake the Kennedy Center to his liking, including losses in several lawsuits, President Trump says he is handing operations of the center back to Congress. It is not clear what that means, since Congress does not actually run the cultural center.
Read more NPR’s new chief content officer: ‘I’ve been training for this job my whole life’
The move comes after a judge in Washington, D.C., sided with jazz performer Chuck Redd, who canceled a 2025 holiday concert after Trump’s name was added to the building. The judge wrote that the Kennedy Center failed to prove the musician had signed a contract to perform.
Josef Palermo, a former curator of visual arts at the Kennedy Center, wrote about his experience in a piece for titled “What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center.”
He told on Monday he joined at a time when others were quitting or being fired because he wanted to “run towards it as a sort of metaphorical first responder and try to save what I could.”
Read more Xi and Kim express hopes for greater ties between China and North Korea
Palermo also said Trump’s Truth Social post about handing control back to Congress sounded like an attempt to distance himself from an institution. He adds that he believes the Trump administration has driven the center into bankruptcy. Programs such as the National Symphony Orchestra still do not have approved budgets.
In this interview, he talks about how the Kennedy Center’s leadership changed under Trump and how questions now surround the institution’s finances and future.
Read more In his book, self-described USAID ‘whistleblower’ talks about the agency and Ebola