Week of Feb. 13, 2025

From the editor’s desk

The Trump administration is asserting its influence over some of the nation’s prominent arts and culture institutions. 

On Feb. 6, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that it has canceled its Challenge America program, which offered $10,000 grants for arts projects that benefit underserved groups. Examples include “ballet classes for children with disabilities in Maryland, a prison theater program in Missouri and a Native American artists residency in North Dakota.”

As of yesterday, the NEA’s Challenge America webpage mentioned that this grant program would be replaced by one “supporting projects that celebrate and honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.” As of today, there is no such mention on that page.

On Feb. 7, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was firing board trustees of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., who do not share “our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” citing drag shows “specifically targeting our youth.” In the following days, he told multiple media outlets that his broader concern is “woke culture” and said, “Some of the shows were terrible. They’re a disgrace that they were even put on.”

Trump later became the Kennedy Center’s board chair, dismissed all 18 Biden appointees and fired the center’s director, Deborah F. Rutter.

In a Feb. 10 Truth Social post, he added “anti-American propaganda” to his list of things that would not stand at the center and announced a new director, Richard “Ric” Grenell—a longtime Trump loyalist and former ambassador to Germany who has not left much of a trail on his social media or elsewhere about his views on the arts. The Washingtonian reported a few clues. Tributes to Olivia Newton-John and Suzanne Somers are among his few public mentions of anything arts related. LGBT Nation pointed out that Grenell is an openly gay man charged with stopping drag shows.

The recent changes at the NEA and the Kennedy Center are part of a larger attempt to alter cultural expression. So, why would the Trump administration care so much about what artists are doing? It’s a classic tactic from the dictatorial playbook because, well, artists talk back. In 2017—shortly after Trump first took office and tried, unsuccessfully, to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts entirely—New York Times op-ed contributor Eve L. Ewing put it like this:

As Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.

This morning, Boston public radio station WBUR aired an interview with Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post’s art and architecture critic, about the changes to the Kennedy Center’s leadership. Kennicott said:

What should disturb Americans about this is that unlike previous conservative administrations, this is not about pulling funding from the arts. … This seems to be explicitly not just about programming at the Kennedy Center, but part of a larger attack on the much larger nonprofit sector, which includes the major foundations and universities as well.

As of today, the First Amendment still stands, and free speech is still legal in the United States. So, carry on as you were, artists. In the coming years, we’re really going to need you.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor