Inside Trump’s transformation of the Kennedy Center

(CNN) — President Donald Trump doesn’t have his name on the Kennedy Center yet, but he’s already shaped it to his tastes.

Just days after participating in the FIFA World Cup draw onstage — and accepting the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize — Trump is expected to host the Kennedy Center Honors, bestowing awards upon Sylvester Stallone, the rock band KISS and Gloria Gaynor, among others.

Later this month, he’s assembling the center’s board of trustees, which he chairs, in Palm Beach, Florida — nearly 1,000 miles away from the institution’s home in Washington, DC — for a “full schedule of events,” according to an invitation obtained by CNN.

The December 18 off-site meeting and Trump-centric events underscore how the president has sought to put his mark on the country’s most prominent cultural institution: reshaping its leadership, securing multimillion-dollar congressional funding for renovations, and reimagining its programming. The moves have led to profound internal upheaval and drawn scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers, members of the arts community and former Kennedy Center staffers.

Those changes — both thematic and cosmetic — also reflect Trump’s broader efforts to remake Washington, DC.

Board meetings, one attendee says, now mirror Trump Cabinet meetings, with members going around the room to “talk about how great and visionary the president is and how he has so much class and taste.”

Trump is center stage

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center started early. Days after returning to office, he announced an aggressive plan to gut the existing board of trustees and oust its chairman, the billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein.

He installed a who’s who of loyalists — including new president Richard Grenell, his ambassador to Germany during his first term, who’s been reevaluating programming and targeting it “for the masses.” Grenell has cut the existing staff, hired political allies and mandated a “break-even policy” for every performance and facility rental.

And as Trump imposes his aesthetic taste on Washington, DC, the Kennedy Center has been no exception. His “One Big, Beautiful Bill” included $257 million for “necessary expenses for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures.” Trump has touted restoration of the exterior marble, the interior chairs and “fully” renovated stages, which he says will be complete within a year.

The changes extend to what’s onstage too, as the president has sought to enact a “Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” saying the “Trump Kennedy Center” — as he’s repeatedly called it — is “not going to be woke.”

The culmination is this weekend’s Kennedy Center Honors — an event Trump skipped during his first term.

The president, who unveiled this year’s honorees in August, said he was “98% involved” in picking the awardees, who would typically be determined through an artist committee, board recommendations and solicitation of the public, according to one former employee.

Like previous years, the honorees will be celebrated with segments featuring special guests and will receive medallions — although the awards have been redesigned to remove their signature rainbow ribbon.

The president’s actual hosting duties could be more limited during the event, which is set to tape on Sunday and broadcast later this month on CBS, according to a source familiar with the matter. Paramount, CBS’ parent company, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment, but a White House official said Trump is indeed playing a leading role.

Backlash to Trump’s changes

The president’s changes haven’t sat well with former employees, who have described political pressure and a fundamental shift in values under the Trump administration — all of which they claim are also hurting its finances.

This holiday season, lagging ticket sales have impacted “The Nutcracker,” historically one of the center’s most popular events. Approximately 10,000 seats were sold for this year’s production across seven performances, compared with around 15,000 seats each in the 2021 through 2024 performances, according to internal sales data reviewed by CNN.

The Kennedy Center comped approximately five times more tickets for the performances this year than in the past four years, the data showed. And this year’s show has fallen about half a million dollars short of its $1.5 million budgeted revenue goal.

A Kennedy Center source granted anonymity to speak freely dismissed concerns about those sales. “Selling every ticket to ‘The Nutcracker’ is absolutely not paying your bills. We have 19 unions here. The production costs are huge,” the source told CNN, adding that a sponsor would be required under the new break-even model to make up the difference.

But there have been deeper concerns about lost revenue, as both artists and audiences flee for other venues. Artists including Issa Rae, Renée Fleming, Shonda Rhimes and Ben Folds resigned from their leadership roles or canceled events at the space. And Jeffrey Seller, producer of the hit musical “Hamilton,” canceled the show’s planned run earlier this year.

“One of the financial lifelines of the center is Broadway,” said one former employee. “Broadway tours are looking at where they should be playing, and in many cases, they are choosing not the Kennedy Center.”

The Kennedy Center source pointed to a recent New York Times report on lagging Broadway profitability writ large. Most of the productions that have canceled, the source said, were unable or unwilling to seek a corporate sponsor to make up the difference in profitability.

“The people who are canceling were usually about finances — because they wanted us to pay the bill — or they were super partisan left wing,” they said.

The center is also facing scrutiny from Democrats in Congress, which funds the facilities. Revenue comes from a combination of ticket sales, rentals and auxiliary services like food and beverage and parking, while donors make up the rest, according to the source familiar with the matter.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Environment and Public Works, has launched an investigation into the management of the center, alleging that it’s “being used as a slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies.”

The White House has defended Trump’s stewardship, with spokesperson Liz Huston saying the president is “restoring the Kennedy Center as the crown jewel of arts and culture in our nation’s capital.”

And Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi touted the team’s fundraising, particularly among corporate donors. She told CNN it has pulled in $131 million on Grenell’s watch after decimating the existing development team.

Under Grenell’s tenure, the Kennedy Center has hosted events for the American Conservative Union Foundation, the premiere of a Christian Broadcasting Network-produced film, “The Revival Generation,” and a memorial for the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. And although Grenell has repeatedly said he’s working to transform the Kennedy Center into a place where “everyone is welcome,” former employees say that hasn’t been the case.

“They would ask us specifically if any of the artists were trans. They never explicitly said, ‘Don’t do that,’ but they would make the conditions impossible for trans artists and gay artists to safely come,” said Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the former head of the Kennedy Center’s social impact team who was dismissed after Trump took office.

The effect was immediate. “In those first months, there were a lot of artists who decided just not to come,” he said.

One of the most significant losses, he noted, came when Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a decadeslong Kennedy Center staple, refused to return.

“Not only do you lose America’s most prestigious long-running dance company, but you also lose those audiences. You’re literally taking the culture out of the place,” Joseph said.

Asked for comment, Grenell called Joseph “far-left.”

The FIFA World Cup draw on Friday displaced previously scheduled arts programming, including the resident National Symphony Orchestra and a production of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 6.”

Its estimated cost to the Kennedy Center was more than $5 million, according to an internal document obtained and published by Whitehouse. The Kennedy Center source said the center “made so much money off FIFA,” telling CNN it drew $7.4 million, plus expenses, but did make a breakdown or documentation available.

Still, in conversations with CNN, multiple arts advocates raised concerns about Grenell’s insistence that all programming break even, noting that the Kennedy Center is a nonprofit entity.

“They want to run a nonprofit arts organization like it’s a for-profit arts organization,” the source familiar said.

“But the whole reason why nonprofit arts organizations exist is to keep art going that isn’t profitable. If you told an opera company to exist on its own because it’s going to make money, there would be no opera.”

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CNN’s René Marsh, Alli Rosenbloom, Adam Cancryn and Kit Maher contributed to this report.