The Kennedy Center's Existential Crisis

Today on CityCast DC, my guest Sylvie McNamara was in the crowd the night Donald Trump's name was supposed to come off the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. But she didn't feel quite the same exultation as everyone else. A classical music lover, as well as a staff writer at Washingtonian, Sylvie has spent months reporting on the endangered state of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, and she knows that the name on the outside is a lot less important than the endangered programming on the inside. She's here to explain where things stand. Today is Tuesday, June 30th. I'm Michael Schaefer. Here's what D.C. is talking about. Hey, Sylvie. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So you were part of the crowd that night when Trump's name was supposed to come off the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. And it was like this sort of circus scene, people out there, anticipatory celebration. And from reading your work, it's pretty clear you wanted the name gone too, but you were also sort of disappointed in the spectacle. Why is that? Yeah, so I was there and I spoke to a lot of people in the crowd. I would say that the ones who were most connected to the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center felt kind of the way I did, which is that the sign is... an important piece of the puzzle, right? Like putting Trump's name on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center certainly led to intensifying boycotts by people who attend concerts there or performers. But it does not resolve the sort of fundamental underlying thing that's threatening the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. Well, it's sort of two things, right? Like the thing that spurred the boycotts initially was Trump becoming chairman of the board. He's still chairman of the board. The second thing is that the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center is intending to close for two years for a renovation. A court ordered that plan to pause, but for various reasons, they seem to be going forward with like a de facto closure where the center is going to stay open nominally. Like you can go in and you can walk around, but there's going to be no arts programming for the foreseeable future. So my feeling was that, you know, It's a good first step to take the sign down. It does not address the sort of existential threat at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. So just before we get into that existential threat, paint the scene a little bit. How can you tell the deeply... deeply tied to the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center people who are outside that night from the more rank and file celebrators, the more anti-Trump celebrators. Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I suppose by talking to them, but you talk to some folks and they're like, I am a musician here and I'm really worried that I'm not going to have a job in the fall. You know, like, I'm glad the sign is coming down, but I do not have a venue to play come September.

You talk to other people. I mean, I spoke with a box office worker, for example, who she's a retired box office worker who just retired to run her union so that she can sort of advocate for the jobs of other box office workers who are threatened who are not going to have jobs or already don't have jobs come early July, right? And then there are people who I spoke with who had never been to a performance at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center who were really mad about Trump. You know, there were people. using the moment to advocate for other causes, right, like draped in pride flags or there was somebody draped in a Palestinian flag. There was a lot of chanting about Trump. There was a lot of signage about fascism. And, you know, of course this is about Trump too. But it felt like the focus of a lot of the energy that was outside the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, especially the loudest energy was on the president and not necessarily on the institution. So let's talk about the institution a little bit. So Trump took over, made himself chairman of the board. There was a... Fairly immediate, a bunch of artists began pulling out. And also, I think, a lot of regular audience people started saying, you know, maybe I don't want to buy season tickets. And for all, we talk about this being a national shrine. It's also a place that depends on ticket sales in this geographic area, which is going to be a geographic area more likely to be grossed out by these changes. So we started to see... already a fall off in the amount of money coming in, which is what then pays for art and pays for box office workers and pays for everything else. And this continued until they announced all of a sudden they were going to close it for two years, which I guess met all those people were going to be out of work. Walk me through the process that got us to this existential dread. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a pretty good gloss up until, I suppose, like, this summer. So the president is installed as the chairman last year in February of 2025, maybe. People stop attending. Major artists cancel. Suddenly there are issues with programming the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center because the president. You know, said very publicly that he doesn't want it to have, like, anti-American propaganda or, like, drag performers or whatever anymore. And a lot of artists are like, this is not for me. So you see, yeah, like huge declines in revenue. You see reports of fundraising falling off a cliff. People are boycotting, et cetera. I think a lot of people forgot that that happened before the sign went up, right? Like, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center was in very, very bad shape in December of 2025 when the sign went up. So there was this board meeting and the board like voted to authorize this renaming allegedly unanimously. The sign goes up like the next day. And Trump is very quickly sued by a member of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's board who he did not appoint Joyce Beatty. She's a congresswoman from Ohio. She's been on the board since 2019. And she sues to stop the renaming, right?

In the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's founding statute, it's like, it has to be named after John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Like, it's the sole of a memorial to John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. There's a lot of rules about what signage can and can't be on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. It seems like to Beatty's team, this is a violation of federal law. So she files this suit in December. Things continue to unravel at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center with the boycotts, artist cancellations. A lot of staff is leaving in this period because the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center seems really unstable. So they lose core programming staff who are also the people who have relationships with the kinds of like big ticket shows that come in and drive the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's revenue, you know, like. If you want to book Hamilton, like you just, you have to have a lot of relationships. And a lot of these people leave. They go to places like all over the country. So suddenly there's this skeletal programming staff. On February 1st of this year, Trump then goes on truth social and announces like, to everyone's surprise, we're closing the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center for two years for renovations. We're going to like make it great. This is the only way to do it. We've done this extensive review. And like it's really an important facility's need that we shut it all down. And immediately people are like, this doesn't seem right. Congress just appropriated all this money to do the renovations. There was a plan in place to do them that didn't require closing down. It didn't require any full closure, right? Like there might have been halls that were closed temporarily for things, but there was a plan in place to keep programming going. Why get so exercised about the closure? I mean, you might say in the grand sweep of things, it's only two years. Who cares? Yeah, no, it's a great question. So a closure like that is catastrophic for a major arts organization, like the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, right? Like if you're closed for two years, you know, the relationships that you've built with artists wither, right? Like audiences get distracted. They go to other venues. They kind of lose track of you. Donors lose interest. Your staff might drift elsewhere, right? Like if they can't. play at their venue or work at the venue where they're employed. You have all of this institutional attrition that happens over the course of a two-year closure. So the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center has never closed, right? Like not fully. It's been open since 1971. Every major renovation that it's done in the past 55 years. It stayed open. You know, they'll close the concert hall for 11 months and the NSA will play elsewhere in the building, but they don't close. And there's a really good reason for that, right? Because it's just bad for the institution. So, I mean, that's why people are so upset about it, that it, that kind of a prolonged closure is pretty unprecedented and it seems pretty dangerous, especially not one that's particularly well planned. So this litigation that sort of came to a head the night that you were outside. It really had two goals. One was to get Trump's name off, and the other was to stop the closure. The judge said Trump's name's got to come off, but the ruling was much less definitive about the closure. Is that right?

In a sense, yes. Okay. So the judge definitely straightforwardly said the name comes down. The name comes down by this date. Like it has to happen. This is why it's clearly illegal for the name to be up. And I will say the Trump administration is appealing to that currently, right? So. TBD. But with the name change, or sorry, with the closure, I mean, the judge temporarily paused the plans to close. The judge basically ruled that the board's decision to authorize this closure that President Trump had already announced and made plans to effectuate. Like the board voted to authorize this closure and that vote was unlawful because this is what the judge said, because the process whereby the board arrived at this decision wasn't responsible, basically. The judge was like, Any institution of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's caliber has, like, the board has a fundamental duty to act in its best interest. And voting to authorize this kind of a closure is like a breach of fiduciary duty, right? Like, if you're a trustee, it's, it's defying your basic responsibility to make good decisions on behalf of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. So the judge was like, you can't move forward with this sort of irresponsible decision that you've made. But in the future, if you meet again, and you consider all the programming needs of the center, if you consider, you know, like the various effects that a closure would have on the center, and you still come out on the side of, like, we absolutely have to close for building maintenance reasons. Maybe that decision would be okay. But the thing is, like, there's no definition of what open means. So even if they're not allowed to close it, the judges really didn't say, like, you must book programming. So yes and no. In the statute that founded the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, Under the duties of the board section, right, like the number one item is to provide arts programming. So the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center has a legal obligation to provide programming to the public in addition to also being like a living memorial to President Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. And so the judge ruled that, you know, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center does not have a legal obligation, for example, to stay open 24 hours a day. Like it can close at night. So there's nothing in the statute that... categorically prohibits the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center from closing, but these closures have to serve its fundamental aims of memorializing President Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and offering arts programming. So the judge basically ordered the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center when he paused the closure, ordered the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center to resume normal operations, and that involves programming. But they haven't done that. No, they have not done that. And so are the plaintiffs going back to the judge to say, come on, man? Yeah, I mean, it's all so confusing. There's so much back and forth in the docket about this right now. The plaintiffs have certainly brought it to the court's attention that the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, you know, if the calendar is essentially bare after July 4th, right? Like, there's nothing on it. The judge last week issued an order. It was very brief, but...

He kind of punted on the programming issue. Instead of... ordering the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center to provide documentation of progress that it was making towards booking shows like the plaintiff wanted. The judge was like, you can wait until after this board meeting that you say is happening in mid-July, where you're going to vote again on whether to close the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. And you can report within a week of that board meeting or before July 31st on what you're going to do with programming. So the judge wasn't like, it's fine to keep the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center nominally open but not program it. The judge also, you know, wasn't like it's fine to just close. He just gave them an extended timeline basically to figure out how they're going to comply. And again, your concern with the sort of de facto closure is that it damages the institution in the long run because it waxed the finances and it wax the relationships with artists and the kind of the churns, since a lot of things that happen now affect things that happen in three, four years. Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways it's possible that it's a worst case scenario because, you know, if the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center is fully closed, it's true that they might be able to attack some of these renovations with increased vigor, right, which might shrink the time frame on the renovations, whether that's how it would actually play out, who knows. But, you know, if the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center is both, like, not being renovated. as fully closed and also isn't offering arts programming, then, yeah, that sort of doubly hurts it, right? So one thing that comes through in a lot of your reporting is, you know, like a lot of... supposedly sophisticated people in Washington, we kind of look down at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, right? We're like, it's where, it's where, you know, not that edgy, out-of-town musicals come through, and, you know, it's way over there, like, may as well be in the suburbs. You've got to drive there. Your work is shot through with a real sense of reverence and affection and love for the place. Talk about that for a minute. I really love classical music, you know, so that's sort of where I'm coming from. I mean, I understand that that's not for everybody. But, you know, I love going to hear the NSO. It is a phenomenal orchestra. Like, it is playing just as well as... the traditional great three American orchestras. I mean, Noseda, the conductor right now is, he's peerless, right? And he has taken an institution that used to be, you know, like a very good regional orchestra and just transformed it into something stunning. So it's a local jewel, you know? Like, I understand that a lot of people are not.

going to be compelled by that necessarily. They backed up St. Vincent the other night. That might be more popular. But yeah, I mean, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center offers a lot of stuff like that where, you know, you really can't get it anywhere else locally. I mean, it's a real loss that the opera has migrated elsewhere, right? Like, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center has the only hall that can really do grand opera in the entire region. And the Washington National Opera is now playing in venues where, like, half of the orchestra has to be piped in from offstage because the pit isn't big enough to hold them. You know, I mean, I'm sure they're going to do a fabulous job with the constraints that they have. But the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center is really designed to be... like the place in the region where you can see, you know, these particular types of art. And it's a real loss for people who work in those worlds and people who care about those worlds for the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center to be shut down.

I'm wondering about how the reporting process has been. Are you getting responses from the center institutionally or board members? Once in a while, the center will reply to a press request. I would say not always and perhaps not most of the time. Board members, I mean, Joyce Beatty has been very responsive. I think she obviously is that multiple lawsuits were filed against the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center and hers has been the one that has been successful. And so she's, she's clearly very proud of that and she's taking additional steps, you know, that. Yeah, I mean, she's very, very committed to the programming portion of this and not just the sign, and she's still working on that. So she's been very helpful. So you were there the other night at the Mark Twain Awards. You write about seeing all these grandees from the board talking about the importance of the institution and so on. What was the scene like? I mean, it was one of the last nights that's going to be open. Yeah, yeah, I think probably going to the Mark Twain Prize on Sunday night was the last time I'll be in the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center for quite a while, I would assume. It was a little sad. I mean, it was weird. This is an event that would ordinarily sell out, right? Like ordinarily people would be packed in there. It would be full of, you know, like high profile official Washington folks. It would be full of, you know, some celebrities who were there. People would be very excited. It would be high energy. It didn't feel like that last night, you know. Like people did come. People dressed up. There were certainly some, like, high-profile Trump administration folks there. There were, you know, some Democrats there as well. I ran into Congressman Ro Khanna. John Fetterman was there. But the whole atmosphere was just pretty weird. Like, it... Yeah, it was very subdued. There was definitely a divide in the crowd. You could tell from where cheers were coming from at which jokes, right? Like, there were, you know, there was a portion of the crowd that would cheer at a mention of the Washington Redskins, right? And there's a portion of the crowd that would cheer at jabs at President Trump. So it was, yeah, I mean, it felt tense. And one thing that was notable to me was that, The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center is imploding in a very high-profile way right now, and there's a lot of stuff surrounding that that's tragic, but there's a lot of stuff surrounding it that's pretty funny and weird. Would seem ripe for jokes, right? Like, we're in a room full of comedians. Barely anybody made any jokes about the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center at all. That's so interesting. Why do you think that is? You know, I don't know. I mean, the whole thing felt a little... It was slightly...

To the, how do I want to say this? I think the volume had been turned down a little bit on the level of criticism that I had expected. You know, even Belmar himself, who is somebody who's very, very critical of the president on television often, was not that critical from the stage, right? Like he kind of outsourced his critique to a Trump impersonator, Matt Friend, who came on stage during Mar's accepted speech. and interrupted him and was like, you know, I'm the one who should be getting this award. Like, I'm so funny, blah, blah, blah. Like, that was certainly a pointed critique of the president that Bill Maher orchestrated, but it wasn't coming from his own mouth. Like, he himself, I think the meanest thing he said about the president was that people might want to, you know, leader who's not so full of shit. So when you think about what's likely to happen, like you've sort of laid out your fears, what do you think, like, in your gut? What do you think is going to happen? I hesitate to prognosticate too much. I would say that in regards to the closure, we're not going to see substantial programming for a long time, right? That stuff takes years to produce. And there's currently nothing on the calendar. I think that it's possible that the National Symphony Orchestra might come back in the fall. It's possible, you know, they don't have a place to play right now. They don't have a budget approved for next season even, right? Like the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's board has not approved its budget. So these musicians have no idea if they even have a job. But, yeah, it's possible that the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center will bring them back for the fall. I don't know. It's possible that the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center will be able to book some, like, token programming. You know, there are musicians who have told me about, like, maybe chamber stuff could happen on the Millennium Stage or, you know, some of the Trump administration folks have been able to book concerts. Like, there's a Christian music concert, I think, coming up in a couple days. Presumably, they have the relationships to do more stuff like that. But, yeah, I would say that best case scenario, we are not for quite a while going to see the scale of programming that the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center typically provides. And worst case scenario, we may see nothing at all, right? Like, they may, the board may vote in mid-July to close, and they might do so in a way that the judge will, in the end, approve. And what about? For now, like the box office takers, you were talking to, are they out of work already? That's a good question. So most of them, yes. Most of them have been laid off or have quit. The ones who remain, I think, may be done like around the 4th of July. You know, there's a couple more programming things that might trickle out in the next couple days. Mulan Rouge closed early on Sunday. It was supposed to run, I think, through the 4th. Why did it close early? Um, that is not clear to me in a way that is publicly reportable. I don't, I don't know. Um, but I mean, like, I will say that we, we don't know why the Trump administration is so bent on closing the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, but there is a lot of credible reporting that the finances are not in good shape and that perhaps, uh,

You know, I think CNN reported that, like, the main concern is literally keeping the lights on, right? Like, that perhaps it's bad enough that the institution might not be able to make payroll if it's forced to stay open in the fall. So I don't know. It's hard to say the Trump administration has denied this, but there have been a lot of reports trickling out that the finances are pretty dire and that that might be really what's pushing the... continued efforts to close despite the court order. And if that's the case, then the programming picture, I think, looks a lot more complicated. You know, like if they can't pay the box office workers, which again, we don't know if that's true. But if that's the case, then it doesn't necessarily work to bring the NSO back in order to fulfill the center's programming obligations. Sylvie, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. And that is all for today here on CityCase DC. If you enjoyed the show, why not tell a friend, rate the show, leave us a review, and subscribe to our morning newsletter. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news from around the city. Bye.