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The Kennedy Center has been a hot topic for the past year after the Trump administration took over leadership. Beginning with the removal of board members and Donald Trump assuming the role of chairman in 2025, the institution has faced ongoing restructuring, artist withdrawals, leadership departures, and programming shifts. It was also recently announced that the institution will shut down operations for two years to undergo renovations. Check out a full timeline of the upheaval here.
In a new article published on The Atlantic, Josef Palermo, an artist who served as the Kennedy Center’s first curator of visual arts and was laid off amidst the Trump administration’s takeover, detailed his experience. Palermo described the chaos that he witnessed as the Center underwent these huge changes.
“Trump had come in promising that ‘for the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!’ On the inside, my colleagues and I instead saw cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center going dark,” Palermo writes.
When Richard Grenell and the Trump administration took over the Kennedy Center, Palermo was told that he would still have creative control over his exhibitions and he concluded that, despite not being politically aligned, he did not want to abandon his role at the Center. However, the first three exhibits that Palermo developed under the new administration never came to be, because he “couldn’t get anyone on the executive team to allocate institutional resources, or money, to them.”
Palermo went on to detail how many of the lounges, including the Israeli Lounge, the Chinese Lounge, the Circles Lounge, and the African Room, which are used for receptions and private dinners, were being offered up to donors and would be renamed for whoever donated the most.
Additionally, several artifacts were taken down and allegedly moved to the archives. Palermo was told to “get rid of” the center’s permanent art collection because new art would be used on the Center’s walls after its renovation. Grenell told Palermo that if the donors of the works didn’t want to pay for their removal, they would put them up for auction or give them away.
Amidst all of this, Grenell was allegedly unavailable to meet for discussions, despite Palermo and his colleagues’ efforts to hold meetings with him. Palermo also discussed how many of the staff under Grenell’s lead were also miscast in their roles, including Lisa Dale, the top fundraising officer, who was unfamiliar with relevant art and culture terms. Other staffers included figures with connections to Republican politics who hadn’t worked in the arts.
When the shutdown was announced, those who lost their jobs, including Palermo, were offered another month of severance benefits only if they signed a separation agreement with confidentiality and nondisparagement provisions.
“I rejected this offer because I believe Americans deserve to know about the desecration of our nation’s cultural center,” Palermo writes.
Palermo has begun participating in the ongoing investigation led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and he has been in touch with Representative Joyce Beatty’s legal team to share information that may help her in her lawsuit to attempt to stop the Center’s renaming.
“There must be a firewall put in place by Congress to prevent this kind of hostile political takeover of the Kennedy Center from ever happening again,” Palermo writes, in conclusion. “I hope that more of my former colleagues come forward too, even if anonymously.”
Read the full article on The Atlantic.
Palermo talked with MS Now in an interview following the publication of this article. Watch the video:
