Latest news with #CommitteeontheArtsandtheHumanities
Los Angeles Times
10-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
A flood of executive orders are impacting the arts: L.A. arts and culture this week
President Donald Trump sent shock waves through the world of arts and culture on Friday when he announced on Truth Social that he intends to appoint himself chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and terminate multiple board members. The unexpected move is one of many — big and small — that Trump has made to stamp his vision on the arts since taking office last month. On Inauguration Day, Trump dissolved the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. That decision wasn't a surprise (Trump also disbanded the group during his first administration after 17 members resigned in protest over his response to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.), but the action — along with Trump's designs on the Kennedy Center — should ring alarm bells for anyone who cares about the wider impact of the arts on the country and the world. The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 to advise on issues of cultural and artistic import, was resurrected by President Joe Biden and included glitzy members such as George Clooney and Shonda Rhimes. Lady Gaga was its co-chair. It was stocked with curators, arts administrators, philanthropists, scholars and artists. Public records show that its budget was a mere $334,947 and that it advanced a total of nine recommendations — four of which were fully implemented — during its last two years of operation. According to information on the Federal Advisory Committee Act database (FACA), the committee's purpose was to advance policy objectives 'with respect to community well-being; economic development and mobility; public, physical, and mental health; education; resilience and adaptation, as well as combatting climate change; civic and democratic engagement; and support for the artistic and cultural heritage of the United States.' There are a number of phrases in the committee's stated goals that would have raised red flags with those seeking to implement the policy objectives of the current administration, including mention of climate change and cultural heritage. But I'm willing to bet that it wasn't those things that made the committee a target — it was simply its existence as a mechanism for promoting a healthy arts and culture ecosystem. The same could be said of the Kennedy Center, which stands as the nation's preeminent bastion of arts and culture. As a tool for dissent, the arts are unrivaled. They also build empathy, encourage creative problem-solving and build strong communities. None of these values appear to currently have a place in Washington. Executive orders can't make the arts go away, but they can impact them in ways large and small. Tariffs could make shipping art into the country more costly; immigration and visa restrictions could keep visiting artists away; dwindling federal funding could severely harm small, local organizations that rely on grants to stay afloat financially; and orders against DEI — and hostility toward trans and nonbinary people — could result in a less equitable landscape for art makers and workers. It's imperative that those of us who care about arts and culture remain aware and vigilant about how big swings in Washington can affect the institutions and people we hold dear. For example, I'll be keeping a close eye on how upcoming cuts to the Department of Education may play out for the arts in public schools. When it comes to patching up the harm done, the work will have to be grassroots — one school, one program, one local theater company or art museum at a time. I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt reminding you to not let your zone get flooded. Ashley Lee and I are here with this week's arts news. 'Alabaster'The L.A. premiere of Audrey Cefaly's Pulitzer-nominated play, about a woman recovering after a natural disaster hit her hometown, has become quite timely, given that our city is dealing with the aftermath of the devastating wildfires. Directed by Casey Stangl, the production of the darkly comic Southern drama exploring women, art and healing stars Laura Gardner, Carolyn Messina, Virginia Newcomb and Erin Pineda. Performances start Wednesday and run through March 30. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave, L.A. Camerata PacificaThe chamber music ensemble is traveling with compositions by George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg and Lara Morciano, as well as Claude Debussy's 'Clair de lune.' After performing this past weekend in Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks, the group takes this program to the Huntington's Rothenberg Hall (7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino) and the Colburn School's Zipper Hall (8 p.m. Thursday, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown). 'Wired for Wonder: A Multisensory Maze'It's officially time for Kidspace Children's Museum to get in on all the PST Art goings-on. 'This interactive maze for children and adults alike uses color, light, movement, texture, vibration and smell to immerse participants fully in a world of the senses — and to reclaim the joy of free play and unstructured exploration,' we wrote of the exhibition, which opens Saturday and runs through Aug. 1. Kidspace Children's Museum, 480 N. Arroyo Blvd., Pasadena. — Ashley Lee MONDAYMonday Night PlayGround Staged readings of six new 10-minute plays, based on the prompt 'If I Had a Song: Folk-Inspired Short Musicals,' are part of PlayGround-LA's 13th season.7 p.m. Broadwater Second Stage, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd. TUESDAYThe Music of Wadada Leo Smith The trumpeter and composer joins the Red Koral Quartet for his String Quartet No. 17.8 p.m. Monk Space, 4414 W. 2nd St. Sugarcane Filmmaker Emily Kassie introduces her and Julian Brave NoiseCat's Oscar-nominated documentary about the cover-up of cultural genocide perpetrated on Indigenous communities in Canada.7 p.m. Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W. Pico Blvd. THURSDAYDon't Touch My Hair IAMA Theatre Company presents a workshop production of the concluding play in Douglas Lyons' 'The Deep Breath Trilogy: New Plays for Black Women.'Through Feb. 24. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. Palm Springs Modernism Week is upon us. The event starts Thursday and continues through Feb. 23, as it celebrates Midcentury Modern architecture, art, interior design and landscape design — of which there is plenty — in and around Palm Springs. The event features more than 350 tours and programs, all of which are open to the public with the purchase of a ticket. Times staff writer Lisa Boone has helpfully rounded up a list and handy map of homes you don't want to miss, including Elvis' honeymoon hideaway. Street artist Victor 'Marka27' Quiñonez has won this year's Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize, which, according to a news release, honors artists 'whose work has made a profound social impact, and interfaces with key issues of our times connected with social justice.' The $25,000 prize also includes a solo project presentation at Frieze Los Angeles. Quiñonez will debut his 'I.C.E. SCREAM' series — paintings and sculptural installations that 'confront the immigrant experience and speak to the beauty, strength, and resilience of migrant workers, street vendors, and Indigenous cultures.' Music-world heavyweight David Geffen is being sued by Hong Kong–based cryptocurrency tycoon Justin Sun for the return of an Alberto Giacometti sculpture titled 'Le Nez.' Sun's suit alleges that after he bought the piece for $78.4 million in 2021, his former advisor concocted a scheme to sell it to Geffen without his knowledge. The suit further alleges that Geffen's team should have seen through the ruse. A 311-year-old Stradivarius violin called 'Joachim-Ma' sold for $11.25 million at Sotheby's in New York on Friday. That was below advance estimates of between $12 million and $18 million, but it's still one of the most expensive musical instruments ever sold at auction. The Guinness World Records title is held by a Stradivarius violin called 'Lady Blunt,' which sold for $15,875,800 in London in 2011. I don't know about you, but I miss the good old days when Grumpy Cat memes reigned during Twitter's 2012 heyday.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Trump Takes Over the Kennedy Center
Artists embarrassed Donald Trump when he first came to Washington. Now that Trump is back in power, he is determined not to let that happen again. Trump plans to announce the dismissal of multiple members of the Kennedy Center board as soon as today, a group likely to include recent appointees of former President Joe Biden; among those on the current board are Democratic political strategist Mike Donilon, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge. The White House has also had discussions about having Trump himself installed as chair of the board, according to two people familiar with the purge, who requested anonymity to describe plans that are not yet public. A White House spokesperson declined to comment. Trump never attended the Kennedy Center's annual gala event during his first term, as artists protested his administration and threatened to boycott Kennedy Center events at the White House. Now, Trump is making clear that he will not be sidelined again from the most celebrated cultural institution in Washington. 'The attitude is different this time. The attitude is go fuck yourself,' said one of the people familiar with the planning. 'It's ridiculous for four years for Trump and Melania to say, 'We're not going to the Kennedy Center because Robert De Niro doesn't like us.'' (De Niro was an Kennedy Center honoree in 2009 and spoke at the 2024 event.) Trump's relationship with the arts world has long been strained. During his first year in office, all 17 members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a nonpartisan advisory body whose members at the time had been appointed by President Barack Obama, resigned over what they called Trump's 'hateful rhetoric' following the white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump later disbanded the group, rather than replace the committee, which was established by Ronald Reagan. Later that year, three of the five artists recognized at the annual Kennedy Center Honors said they would not attend or were considering a boycott of the traditional White House reception before the gala, citing various objections to Trump's leadership. Trump, in response, canceled the reception and became the first sitting president not to attend the gala at any point in his term since its inception in 1978. Trump showed a similar lack of interest in the National Medal of Arts, the government's highest award for artists and arts patrons, which the president oversees. In his first term, Trump distributed just nine medals, including an award to the musicians of the U.S. military. Obama had awarded 76 medals over eight years, and Biden gave out 33 during his four-year term. Trump was more circumspect about the Kennedy Center, alternately praising and criticizing federal funding for the institution. 'They do need some funding. And I said, 'Look, that was a Democrat request. That was not my request. But you got to give them something,' Trump said in 2020, when asked about a proposed $25 million in additional funding as part of a COVID relief bill. 'The Kennedy Center, they do a beautiful job—an incredible job.' Weeks later, he changed his position. 'I hated putting it in the bill because it's just not appropriate,' he said of the funding. If Trump became chair of the Kennedy Center board, he would replace the philanthropist David Rubenstein, who has held the post for 14 years but signaled that he will move on after September 2026. A week after Trump's second inauguration, Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter announced her own plans to step down at the end of the year. For his second term, Trump is taking a more assertive approach to a range of cultural institutions. Within hours of his inauguration, he abolished the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which Biden had revived in 2022, preempting any possibility of another mass resignation. He then moved to impose his own views on government-funded cultural projects. Nine days into his second term, he signed an executive order restarting planning for an idea from his first term: a national 'Garden of American Heroes,' location to be determined. Trump had previously named 244 honorees—52 of them women—who would get statues, including figures from science, sports, entertainment, politics, and business, as well as some of the nation's founders. (The family of at least one would-be honoree, the anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, later asked that he not be included.) Trump also moved quickly to impose his vision on plans for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—July 4, 2026, also known as the Semiquincentennial. He created a new advisory panel, called Task Force 250, that he will chair to support a congressionally funded organization that has already begun planning events. During the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted the Semiquincentennial celebrations to last more than a year, from Memorial Day 2025—just 15 weeks away—until July 4, 2026. He proposed a 'Great American State Fair' in Iowa as one component, an homage to the state's own summer fair tradition but featuring pavilions from each state. He also promised the creation of a new national high school sporting contest, called The Patriot Games, to take place alongside the fair. 'Together we will build it, and they will come,' he said in 2023. Trump's newfound interest in the arts represents a departure of sorts. In his first term, Trump repeatedly tried to pull funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, two major sources of support for arts and cultural programs around the country. But appropriators in Congress overruled him, and by the end of his term, annual funding was up slightly from the beginning of his term, sitting at more than $167 million for each agency. (The number rose to $207 million during Biden's presidency.) This time around, Trump has asked the chairs of both the arts and humanities endowments to join Task Force 250. Nina Ozlu Tunceli, the top lobbyist at the nonprofit Arts Action Fund, who has worked for decades with Congress to secure arts funding, told us she is hopeful that Trump's interest in the 250th celebration will provide 'a very good lifeline' for the endowments' funding. Still, Trump's executive order calling for the 'termination' of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government will become a source of tension—and another way for him to assert his will on the arts. In recent budgets under Biden, House appropriators praised the endowments for 'addressing equity through the arts' and 'diversity at the national endowment.' 'The [Appropriations] Committee directs the NEA to continue prioritizing diversity in its work,' read a section of the fiscal year 2023 budget. Given the changes that have already begun under Trump 'those programs will definitely be removed,' Ozlu Tunceli said. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Trump Takes Over the Kennedy Center
Artists embarrassed Donald Trump when he first came to Washington. Now that Trump is back in power, he is determined not to let that happen again. Trump plans to announce the dismissal of multiple members of the Kennedy Center board as soon as today, a group likely to include recent appointees of former President Joe Biden; among those on the current board are the Democratic political strategist Mike Donilon, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge. The White House has also had discussions about having Trump himself installed as chair of the board, according to two people familiar with the purge, who requested anonymity to describe plans that are not yet public. A White House spokesperson declined to comment. Trump never attended the Kennedy Center's annual gala event during his first term, as artists protested his administration and threatened to boycott Kennedy Center events at the White House. Now Trump is making clear that he will not be sidelined again from the most celebrated cultural institution in Washington. 'The attitude is different this time. The attitude is Go fuck yourself,' said one of the people familiar with the planning. 'It's ridiculous for four years for Trump and Melania to say, 'We're not going to the Kennedy Center because Robert De Niro doesn't like us.'' (De Niro was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009 and spoke at the 2024 event.) Trump's relationship with the arts world has long been strained. During his first year in office, all 17 members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a nonpartisan advisory body whose members at the time had been appointed by President Barack Obama, resigned over what they called Trump's 'hateful rhetoric' following the white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump later disbanded the group, rather than replace the committee, which was established by Ronald Reagan. Later that year, three of the five artists recognized at the annual Kennedy Center Honors said they would not attend or were considering a boycott of the traditional White House reception before the gala, citing various objections to Trump's leadership. Trump, in response, canceled the reception and became the first sitting president not to attend the gala at any point in his term since its inception in 1978. Trump showed a similar lack of interest in the National Medal of Arts, the government's highest award for artists and arts patrons, which the president oversees. In his first term, Trump distributed just nine medals, including an award to the musicians of the U.S. military. Obama had awarded 76 medals over eight years, and Biden gave out 33 during his four-year term. Trump was more circumspect about the Kennedy Center, alternately praising and criticizing federal funding for the institution. 'They do need some funding. And I said, 'Look, that was a Democrat request. That was not my request. But you got to give them something,' Trump said in 2020, when asked about a proposed $25 million in additional funding as part of a COVID relief bill. 'The Kennedy Center, they do a beautiful job—an incredible job.' Weeks later, he changed his position. 'I hated putting it in the bill because it's just not appropriate,' he said of the funding. If Trump became chair of the Kennedy Center board, he would replace the philanthropist David Rubenstein, who has held the post for 14 years but signaled that he will move on after September 2026. A week after Trump's second inauguration, Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter announced her own plans to step down at the end of the year. For his second term, Trump is taking a more assertive approach to a range of cultural institutions. Within hours of his inauguration, he abolished the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which Biden had revived in 2022, preempting any possibility of another mass resignation. He then moved to impose his own views on government-funded cultural projects. Nine days into his second term, he signed an executive order restarting planning for an idea from his first term: a national 'Garden of American Heroes,' location to be determined. Trump had previously named 244 honorees —52 of them women—who would get statues, including figures from science, sports, entertainment, politics, and business, as well as some of the nation's founders. (The family of at least one would-be honoree, the anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, later asked that he not be included.) Trump also moved quickly to impose his vision on plans for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—July 4, 2026, also known as the Semiquincentennial. He created a new advisory panel, called Task Force 250, that he will chair to support a congressionally funded organization that has already begun planning events. During the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted the Semiquincentennial celebrations to last more than a year, from Memorial Day 2025—just 15 weeks away—until July 4, 2026. He proposed a 'Great American State Fair' in Iowa as one component, an homage to the state's own summer fair tradition but featuring pavilions from each state. He also promised the creation of a new national high school sporting contest, called The Patriot Games, to take place alongside the fair. 'Together we will build it, and they will come,' he said in 2023. Trump's newfound interest in the arts represents a departure of sorts. In his first term, Trump repeatedly tried to pull funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, two major sources of support for arts and cultural programs around the country. But appropriators in Congress overruled him, and by the end of his term, annual funding was up slightly from the beginning of his term, sitting at more than $167 million for each agency. (The number rose to $207 million during Biden's presidency.) This time around, Trump has asked the chairs of both the arts and humanities endowments to join Task Force 250. Nina Ozlu Tunceli, the top lobbyist at the nonprofit Arts Action Fund, who has worked for decades with Congress to secure arts funding, told us she is hopeful that Trump's interest in the 250th celebration will provide 'a very good lifeline' for the endowments' funding. Still, Trump's executive order calling for the 'termination' of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government will become a source of tension—and another way for him to assert his will on the arts. In recent budgets under Biden, House appropriators praised the endowments for 'addressing equity through the arts' and 'diversity at the national endowment.' 'The [Appropriations] Committee directs the NEA to continue prioritizing diversity in its work,' read a section of the fiscal year 2023 budget. Given the changes that have already begun under Trump 'those programs will definitely be removed,' Ozlu Tunceli said.
New York Times
30-01-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Dissolves Arts Committee Previously Restored by Biden
The Trump administration has quietly dissolved the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, part of a flurry of executive orders aimed at rolling back the previous administration's policies on art, culture and historical commemoration. The move was part of President Trump's first executive order, issued on Inauguration Day, that reversed more than two dozen 'harmful executive orders and actions' taken by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That order has drawn attention for its rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government, which has left federal museums and cultural organizations uncertain how to respond. The dissolution of the arts committee, made without comment from the White House, has been little noticed. At some point, its website was taken down. Since it was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, the committee has brought together prominent artists, powerful allies of the president, academics and museum professionals to advise on cultural policy. Members have included the singer Frank Sinatra; the cellist Yo-Yo Ma; Terry Semel, a former chairman of Warner Bros.; and Robert Menschel, a former Goldman Sachs partner. In the 1990s, it petitioned President Bill Clinton to restore funding for public arts education, to require high school students to have competency in a foreign language, and to expand tax incentives for cultural philanthropy. Under President Barack Obama, the committee developed Turnaround Arts, an experimental initiative to boost arts education in the nation's lowest-performing schools. The committee was nonpartisan. But during the first Trump administration, it inadvertently became a showcase for the mutual antagonism between Mr. Trump and what he has often derided as out-of-touch cultural elites. In August 2017, 17 members resigned in protest over Mr. Trump's response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. In a group open letter, members including the artist Chuck Close, the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and the architect Thom Mayne criticized what they said was Mr. Trump's 'support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans.' The White House then issued a statement saying Mr. Trump had already been planning to disband the group, calling it 'not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars.' Nearly two years into his administration, in September 2022, Mr. Biden revived the group, calling the arts 'the soul of America, reflecting our multicultural and democratic experience.' His executive order cited the importance of the arts and humanities in tackling 'the greatest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and the scourge of hate-fueled violence.' In April 2023, Mr. Biden named 31 members, including prominent figures like George Clooney, Jon Batiste and Shonda Rhimes as well as museum curators, academics and the leaders of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian. The co-chairs were the singer Lady Gaga and the producer Bruce Cohen, a Biden supporter who also received a National Medal of Arts that same year. The committee, which had an annual budget of roughly $335,000, met six times after resuming operations. Its activities, according to public records, included reviewing a proposal for a campaign to combat the loneliness epidemic identified by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general. Records do not indicate how many members of the group actively participated, or the range of subjects on which it offered advice. Its final meeting was held on Jan. 9. Steve Israel, a former Democratic U.S. representative from New York who served on the committee, said he was disturbed by Mr. Trump's move. 'Not only did he fire us all, but he disbanded the actual committee,' Mr. Israel said. 'It suggests that there's a proactive hostility toward arts and humanities.' The dissolution of the committee was just one of the Trump administration's recent actions touching on cultural matters, most of which reversed Mr. Biden's initiatives or restored Trump efforts that Mr. Biden had undone. On Wednesday, in an order dedicated to K-12 education, Mr. Trump revived his 1776 Commission, which he created in 2020 to promote 'patriotic education.' In a separate order, he reinstated his call for the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes and his executive order protecting monuments on federal land from vandalism. That second order, titled 'Celebrating America's 250th Birthday,' reiterated Mr. Trump's calls for a robust celebration of the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, in July 2026. As part of that, he announced a task force, led by him, that would 'plan, organize and execute an extraordinary celebration.' The order provided no details on funding or programming but specified that the task force would be housed within the Department of Defense.
