Invited, then uninvited: How Trump's Kennedy Center is policing art
Growing up in Southeast Washington, Tariq Herencia saw the Kennedy Center only from a distance, except that one time his school bused the kids across the Anacostia River and over to the gleaming white culture palace on the Potomac to see 'The Nutcracker.'
'That was the place for the crème de la crème,' Herencia told me. 'Being a native Washingtonian, even as a kid, you knew that was someplace special. It belonged to us, but it wasn't for us and we might never go there.'
This spring, more than four decades after that one-time school trip, Herencia returned to the center — as a poet, an ex-con making his debut on the big stage, the first in a planned two-year series of performances showcasing artists who'd spent years behind bars. The show, produced by the Free Minds Book Club, was part of the Kennedy Center's Culture Caucus, a roster of nine local arts groups that competed to win grants and the chance to perform at the center.
You can guess what happened after the show: Herencia, Free Minds and all the other groups got the hook. President Donald Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center brought a sudden silence to the Culture Caucus: shows canceled, relationships severed, hopes dashed.
You've probably heard about the big-name cancellations. The touring production of 'Hamilton' scrapped its D.C. visit in protest of the Trump putsch. The center's dwindling staff had to scramble to fill next season's calendar because some artists refuse to play the venue. But probably the most searing impact of the takeover has been the exclusion of small, local groups for whom the Kennedy Center gig was the pinnacle of success, welcome recognition of the good they've done for people who live here.
'This was a big deal, especially for someone like me, coming from the penitentiary,' said Herencia, 53, who served 32 years for manslaughter before winning release in 2020.
That evening at the center, before everything came crashing down for Free Minds' poets and visual artists, Herencia recited his poem 'Damage,' about his conviction and imprisonment at age 16. Before a packed house, he took the audience into his life: Each stanza detailed another moment from his teenage journey through violence and into incarceration; each ended with Herencia calling out, 'Damage,' and leading the audience to respond with '… at that damn age.'
'The place, the crowd, the energy was amazing,' he told me. 'They had a little green room for the performers. It was surreal. And the demographics! The audience included people who'd never meet someone like me. When the evening was over, we couldn't wait to come back to that atmosphere.'
There will be no next time, at least not during the reign of Trump. As part of the president's takeover, the center has eliminated programs presumed to be advancing diversity.
Free Minds, a nonprofit that provides inmates with books, writing coaches and job training, has been pushing for 22 years to achieve exactly what arts centers are supposed to do: Foster connections, provide glimpses of lives unlike our own, embrace the clashes that bring people closer to understanding.
It's that last bit that is suddenly verboten at the Kennedy-Trump Center.
Tara Libert, the book club's co-founder and director, says the Kennedy Center's social impact staff helped Free Minds artists prepare their performances and gave them marketing and business advice, as well as something priceless: a new audience, one they rarely saw at their readings at churches and schools.
'It was the two Washingtons — one focused on policy and international, and then the native Washingtonians, who face all these barriers that are so real,' Libert said. 'And we were together. The sky was the limit. And then boom, it's gone.'
The three additional shows scheduled over the next two years — canceled. Teaching by the center's professionals — eliminated.
The Kennedy Center did not respond to my requests to interview its director, Richard Grenell, or to questions about the cancellation of its Culture Caucus performances, though a couple of days after I asked about it, the center did send Free Minds the $5,000 grant it had been promised. In an interview with Washington Reporter, a right-wing site, Grenell said it was 'criminal' mismanagement for the Kennedy Center to fund programs that don't make a profit.
Instead, he said, he intends to bring 'arts and entertainment to the Kennedy Center that actually sell tickets.'
Grenell apparently doesn't comprehend that the center deserves tax dollars only because it has a public purpose — to present programming that might not make it in the private sector.
The first inklings of what Trump and company intend to do next are not encouraging: They've added a tribute to Dolly Parton, which would do well in any commercial venue, and they're staging a fundraiser honoring guess who? — our president, of course.
The center's previous managers certainly had a political bent — the groups selected for the Culture Caucus by and large were left-leaning. Some were sharply radical. One, named Crushing Colonialism, features storytelling that 'uplifts indigenous people … in the so-called United States.' Oy.
But rather than add other voices, the Trump-led Kennedy Center opted for staff cuts, Trump's weird (and expensive) fixation with covering exposed building columns with marble, and the purging of local performers.
If Herencia could visit the White House five miles up Pennsylvania Avenue from his old neighborhood, he told me, he'd tell the boss, 'Man, you're not from here. That center belongs to us. How dare you?'
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