The growing number of musicians and other artists canceling their scheduled performances at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is a fallout of President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the cultural center in his own image. As with his ratings-dud attempt at hosting the annual Kennedy Center Honors this month, this president continues to alienate audiences.
The canceled performances, including ones scheduled for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, cap a tumultuous year at the center. In February, Trump ousted several members of the center’s bipartisan board of trustees and replaced them with lackies, who swiftly named him chair of the board. The same board voted this month to tack Trump’s name to the front of the historic center. Several stars, including Issa Rae, announced early this year that they would no longer perform at the venue. The result, in tandem with this week’s cancellations, is a performing arts center that may soon be lacking in performances.
The result, in tandem with this week’s cancellations, is a performing arts center that may soon be lacking in performances.
Many of the artists who have canceled their gigs made clear that their decision was in reaction to the Trump administration, not the Kennedy Center’s staff or patrons. Ric Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the Kennedy Center, scoffed at the cancellations, calling the artists “far-left political activists” in a statement to The New York Times. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said.
This is exactly the kind of Trumpian bombast that endeared Grenell to the president enough that he was named ambassador to Germany in Trump’s first term. MAGA acolytes have spent the past half-decade deriding any criticism as “Trump derangement syndrome.” But Grenell can’t hand-wave the string of cancellations away quite so easily.
First, Grenell essentially accusing performers of being performative illustrates an utter lack of understanding about the arts and audience. It’s as though his mind cannot fathom why an artist might decide to withhold their work from certain audiences at certain venues. And as though there is not a rich tradition of art as protest in this country, either in boldly staging performances calling out injustice or in shunning stages that demanded segregated audiences.
It also speaks to a multilayered irony unfolding since the Trumpist takeover at the Kennedy Center began in early 2025. Grenell’s public reasoning for the necessity of the coup d’arts actually wasn’t artistic or even truly aesthetic in nature. Instead, in March, he said in an interview with a conservative outlet that the changes were about the center’s fiscal health. The goal is “trying to get us refocused on a commonsense mission: bringing arts and entertainment to the Kennedy Center that actually sell tickets. We had spent way too much on programming that doesn’t bring in any revenue,” Grenell said. While insisting that he “enjoys being challenged by art,” he said his “job as the leader is to make sure that the Kennedy Center has a sound fiscal policy.”
From that commercially focused perspective, it’s easy to see why cancellations could be explained away as madness. After all, if concerts and other performances are only about drawing in crowds to make money, only a fool would turn that down. A dance company that pulled out of two April 2026 scheduled shows told the Times it would lose $40,000 for doing so. “It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating,” Doug Varone, head of Doug Varone and Dancers, wrote in an email to the newspaper. The Kennedy Center appears to be hurting more financially than benefiting from Trump’s attempted rebranding But the Kennedy Center appears to be hurting more financially than benefiting from Trump’s attempted rebranding. A Washington Post analysis found that “ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years,” based on the paper’s assessment of “ticketing data from dozens of recent shows as well as past seasons.” The Post’s finding that more than 40% of seats were empty across an average of the performances during the time analyzed is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Grenell’s strategy. Washington Post opinion columnist Megan McArdle also mused on the financial side of the artistic boycotts on X, fretting that “some of the patrons who don’t show up now will get out of the habit of going to the theater and be less likely to attend future performances.” Of course, as Grenell himself noted, it’s his job and the board’s job to fill seats, not the artists. And it is not as though there’s a lack of spaces for potential arts patrons to go see live performances, especially in Washington. Maybe another venue will rise to rival the Kennedy Center. There’s a simple analogy for this situation that Grenell and everyone else ought to be able to understand. Think of an artist whose work is hanging in a museum. If the wing of that venue were sponsored by a wealthy patron whose politics the artist finds odious, they would be well within their rights to pull their art. That might deprive attendees of the opportunity to see their work; if popular enough, such a move could hurt the museum’s attendance overall. But it is well within an artist’s right to not have their work, and its message, share space with someone they consider toxic.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily. 
