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It was the night after President Trump had officially taken over the Kennedy Center and made himself its chairman, and two well-dressed Washington women were wandering along the plush red carpet inside its Grand Foyer, so grand it could fit the Washington Monument laid on its side. They reached the eight-foot-tall bronze head of John F. Kennedy that lords over the hall and looked forlornly into his eyes.<\/p>\n
How much longer, one woman joked to the other, until the statue of the 35th president gets torn down and replaced with one of the 47th? They laughed bitterly.<\/p>\n
It was just last week that Mr. Trump announced his plan to purge the Kennedy Center\u2019s board of its Biden appointees and to install \u201can amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!\u201d He named one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks, Richard Grenell, interim president and proclaimed that there would be no more \u201cANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA\u201d shown. He complained about drag queens performing there and said it had all become too \u201cwokey.\u201d Some artists canceled shows. \u201cWelcome to the New Kennedy Center!\u201d Mr. Trump said on social media<\/a>, posting an A.I.-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall.<\/p>\n Most of the people who turned up at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night to see performances in its various theaters had purchased their tickets long before any of that was set in motion. Now they found themselves at an arts center on the cusp of becoming something different \u2014 something Trumpian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some speculated what that might look like.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like we might just have \u2018Cats\u2019 on rotation moving forward,\u201d said Pamela Deutsch, a documentary film producer who once worked as an usher at the Kennedy Center. (Mr. Trump, who once had dreams of becoming a Broadway producer, is a longtime fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) She was there to catch a set by the comic W. Kamau Bell. So was Louis Woolard, a 73-year-old psychotherapist from Maryland. What sort of cultural programming did he envision under the artistic stewardship of the 47th president? \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said Mr. Woolard. \u201cI guess country music.\u201d<\/p>\n At the other end of the Grand Foyer, American Ballet Theater was putting on a production of \u201cCrime and Punishment,\u201d an effort to make dance out of Dostoyevsky. A 75-year-old real estate investment banker named Wayne Koonce waited in line to have his ticket scanned. \u201cMaybe the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi will be invited back now that he\u2019s cozying up to Putin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For the many people in liberal Washington scandalized by Mr. Trump\u2019s takeover of the Kennedy Center, Thursday night was like a cross between a wake and last call. Drag performers protested outside in the cold<\/a>, as students from George Washington University marched around shouting about Mr. Trump. Inside, some well-heeled patrons of the ballet were literally clutching their pearls as they contemplated the future of the institution. At the other end of the foyer, copies of a children\u2019s book called \u201cDo the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book\u201d were being sold ahead of Mr. Bell\u2019s stand-up routine. (He co-wrote the book.)<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, Trump took over, he\u2019s the new chairman of the Kennedy Center,\u201d he said at the top of his set. The audience let out a low boo. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t call it the Kennedy Center anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s call it the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center.\u201d More booing. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to have people running it with no expertise at all,\u201d he continued, \u201cyou might as well have it named after the guy with no expertise at all.\u201d (Earlier that day, Mr. Kennedy had been confirmed as health secretary.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Bell tore into the president and talked about white supremacy, nationalized health care, oligarchy, fascism, socialism, transgender rights, slavery, kale chips, Nazidom and other such topics that would presumably qualify as \u201cwokey\u201d under new management. The comic also guessed at what sort of changes were in store.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHow many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?\u201d he wondered as the audience groaned.<\/p>\n On a settee outside the ballet, a husband and wife \u2014 both teachers from Arlington, Va. \u2014 tried to figure out what the president meant by \u201canti-American propaganda.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t figure it out,\u201d said the wife. \u201cImmigrants,\u201d suggested the husband. \u201cBut what does that actually mean?\u201d asked the wife.<\/p>\n Some fretted as to whether they ought to boycott the place going forward. \u201cLike a lot of people in Washington,\u201d said Mr. Koonce, \u201cwe\u2019re trying to figure out: Will we continue to come? You want to support the artists, but you don\u2019t want to support anything connected with this philistine, backward movement of the arts, which is exactly what it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n So much of what President Trump is up to in Washington is about payback. He is taking his revenge on a town that snubbed him. Last time he was president, some artists accepting the Kennedy Center honors refused to go to the White House, and in response he and Melania Trump never went to the Kennedy Center.<\/p>\n Vice President JD Vance, and his wife, Usha, though, seem to genuinely enjoy the Kennedy Center\u2019s programming. She has been a member of the opera\u2019s board for more than a year, and the couple took their young children there in December for a production of \u201cJungle Book\u201d<\/a> that the Kennedy Center described as being told \u201cthrough a contemporary lens by framing Mowgli as a refugee trying to find safety in a new environment.\u201d (In other words, possibly wokey.) They enjoyed it so much they went backstage after it was over.<\/p>\n In Mr. Trump\u2019s war against the town\u2019s institutions, the battle over this one can seem low-stakes by comparison. What is a performing arts center compared to the Justice Department, trans-Atlantic alliances, foreign aid and all the rest? Still, it has struck a chord. People perambulating up the Grand Foyer on Thursday \u2014 many of whom were federal workers now fearing for their jobs \u2014 seemed especially agitated by what was happening there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Michael Gray, a 63-year-old retired refugee officer who worked for the State Department beginning under George H.W. Bush, was there to see the ballet. Asked what he thought about the president\u2019s proclamation about anti-American propaganda, Mr. Gray said, \u201cI think it\u2019s nonsense.\u201d But he was able to take the long view.<\/p>\n \u201cThings come and they go,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the arts don\u2019t, and the love of the arts does not.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n