Profs & Pints DC: The Tragedy of the Kennedy Center

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Tragedy of the Kennedy Center,” an expert’s analysis of the rise and falter of an iconic performing arts institution, with E. Andrew Taylor, associate professor and director of the Arts Management Program at American University.

Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-kennedy-center .]

The unraveling of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—its programs, personnel, buildings, and budgets—might seem sudden. But the vulnerabilities exposed under President Trump were decades in the making.

Gain a much better understanding of the center’s past, current crisis, and potential future with E. Andrew Taylor, who has written extensively on the center, advised Washington Post coverage of its governance and finances, and submitted expert testimony in federal litigation concerning the center’s future.

He’ll describe how for more than 50 years the Kennedy Center has operated through an uneasy truce among different players with varied agendas. It has simultaneously served as a federal memorial, a congressionally chartered institution, and a tax-exempt nonprofit—as well as an arts educator, producer, presenter, and rental venue for nonprofit and commercial events.

We’ll look at what held this strange public-private-nonprofit hybrid together for so long, however imperfectly. We’ll examine which legal gaps, governance weaknesses, and abandoned conventions allowed it to unravel so quickly after President Trump remade its board and became its chair.

You'll emerge with an appreciation of how the Center is like many other large-scale performing arts centers and how it's dramatically different. Among the questions Professor Taylor will tackle: Who decides the Kennedy Center’s future and who holds those decision-makers to account? If the place and its purpose survive the current moment, should it be restored, rebuilt, or, even, reimagined? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The Trumps stand in a Kennedy Center balcony and wave at Les Misérables in June 2025 (White House photo).