In February, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts underwent drastic changes, as President Donald J. Trump was elected chairman and one of his allies, Richard Grenell, was made president. Trump also sharply rearranged the formerly bipartisan board of trustees, purging former President Joe Biden’s appointees and replacing them with Republicans like second lady Usha Vance, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, and “God Bless the U.S.A.” songwriter Lee Greenwood.
Trump pinned his changes at the Kennedy Center on the shows being “terrible” and “a disgrace.” When asked by a reporter if he ever attended a Kennedy Center show, however, the president, who did not attend the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term, replied simply, “No.”
In protest of Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover, dozens of artists—including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rhiannon Giddens, Issa Rae, and Low Cut Connie—canceled performances and appearances. One artist who does not wish to boycott the Kennedy Center, however, is Virginian guitarist Yasmin Williams.
Williams, whose last two albums, Urban Driftwood and Acadia, have been released to great acclaim, sought clarification on the changes at the Kennedy Center by emailing Richard Grenell directly. Her conversation with the institution’s president has gone viral.
According to screenshots of her email exchange that she posted online, Williams had just two questions for Grenell: “does the President actually care about artists cancelling shows at the Kennedy Center? What, if anything, has changed about the Kennedy Center regarding hiring practices, performance booking, and staffing?”
Instead of an answer, she got a question back from Grenell: “Let me ask you this question,” he offered, “would you play for Republicans or would you boycott if Republicans came to your show?”
What ensued was a back-and-forth that involved Grenell, according to the screenshots, accusing the artists who canceled shows of doing so “because they couldn’t be in the presence of republicans” and saying that the “Kennedy has zero in the bank and zero reserves and has been paying the staff with debt reserve money for the past 8 months.” He also said, “The programs are so woke that they haven’t made money,” and admitted, “Yes, I cut the DEI bullshit because we can’t afford to pay people for fringe and niche programming that the public won’t support. Yes, I cut the people making over $500k a year because we are in debt. Yes, we are doing programming for the masses in order to pay our bills.”
Days after the email exchange, Williams spoke with Pitchfork over the phone about her conversation with Grenell, the Kennedy Center employees who contacted her afterward, and why she hopes the institution will continue booking arts programming. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Yasmin Williams: Several musician friends of mine, along with people who aren’t musicians but attend the Kennedy Center regularly to see shows, have been talking a lot about what direction the Kennedy Center’s going in. This started when the new leadership took over and Trump put himself in charge of the Kennedy Center; a lot of my friends were worried about that for obvious reasons. We just weren’t sure what was really gonna happen. A lot of the articles that I personally have been reading have really conflicting messaging. For example, “This show was canceled by the leadership that Trump appointed to the Kennedy Center,” and then this other article about the same show says, “Oh, well this was canceled before Trump took over.” That’s really conflicting and not really helpful for me in trying to figure out what exactly is going on.
Also, I really care about the Kennedy Center. I’ve seen a lot of shows there; some of the highlights of my life happened there; and I just wanna see the building continue to exist. So I found [Richard Grenell’s] email through [folk musician] Cathy Fink, who was also sending letters and emails to him, and to other people trying to do the same thing, just to figure out what’s going on. Before any of this happened in the email exchange, I had been pretty vocal about artists boycotting because, at that point when the new leadership was announced, a lot of artists were pulling out of their board positions and boycotting or canceling their shows. I remember saying that I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. I thought that artists should continue to play there, mainly because I know a lot of people who work there and their incomes were being really, really negatively impacted from artists canceling shows. The Kennedy Center pays way more in hourly wages to their staff and union workers who freelance there than literally any other venue does in the D.C. area.
Yes, they were all there. I shared them in the order in which they were sent, too.
I sent my email around 9:23 p.m. on Tuesday, and he responded at, like, 11:00 p.m. that same night. Every email after that was rapid-fire, like responses from him were coming in five minutes or less.
Yes, this whole thing took place at night! I was not expecting an answer at all, much less then.
I shared it right after some time had passed and I sent my last email, which was the final email saying that I thought he was being rude and whatever other adjectives I used. I put it on my Instagram stories because I thought it was really shocking and bizarre. I don’t remember being super upset or anything. I just thought people needed to read this exchange in its entirety and deserved to know that this is the person heading up the Kennedy Center. Interim executive director or not, this is who’s running things here. He clearly doesn’t care about the arts, he’s clearly lying in the emails, and he’s clearly unhinged. When I woke up the next morning, it had blown up.
Definitely. When I sent my original email, I was just trying to get answers to those two questions that I asked. Nothing more, nothing less. If he had answered them directly, I would’ve shared via that exchange and that would’ve been it.
But I received so many messages from Kennedy Center employees—current and former—who seem really thankful that I shared the exchange publicly and that it’s getting so much traction from press, because they’ve been dealing with this for months: being gaslit by this new leadership, not being helped at all, and dealing with these new hires. A few current Kennedy Center employees told me that the new people who were hired are making fun of the workers who’ve been there a long time. If a worker has an accent, they’ll make fun of their accent. Everyone said the environment there right now is really, really bad; not at all like what it was prior to this new leadership coming in. So to me, those are the most important messages that I’ve received—and I’ve received thousands at this point. Reading what the workers and employees have to say about why they’re thankful that I shared the conversation, how they feel seen, how they now know they’re not insane. Obviously, they felt badly for me being talked to that way, but they were happy that now the way they’ve been treated for months is getting some coverage. That was like a whole new dimension for me. I didn’t think any of that was gonna happen, but I’m happy that I could at least help the people who are still trying to make it work there, you know? And now that people know this, they can make their own decisions as to whether or not they wanna attend a show there.
Of current staff? Over 100 people, easily. If you add former staff, that’s another 25 people. These are just the people who’ve reached out to me on Instagram.
Overall, I’ve been treated very well by the staff there, both people I’d seen repeatedly as an attendee and when I was playing the show. Everyone who worked there is super nice, especially the people who run the programming. If I was attending a show there and saw someone I knew, I’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” Talk for a little chat. Until this year, I’d never had a problem with anyone there. That’s what makes it so sad to hear what’s happening now.
Nope. I’ve heard from no one associated with the Kennedy Center about anything.
I just hope it still exists. That’s the bare minimum, but, at this point, I don’t even know if the building will exist after this presidency is over. If it does, will it still be an arts center? I’m not super convinced. I hope that programming is still high quality like it’s been for decades; I hope musicians will want to play there again; and I hope that people will still want to see performances. None of those things are really happening right now.
The Kennedy Center is interesting because it’s a living landmark. Having a building like that be specifically dedicated for the arts is extremely uncommon in this country, which makes the building extremely valuable and important. It’s sad what’s happening now because I never thought of the Kennedy Center as a political place. It’s just a place to see art. I just thought of it as a place that’s accepting of everyone, where politics don’t matter once you step through the door, but that’s clearly not the case anymore.
Yeah, Alexandria. Honestly, it’s just disappointing that no one has really reached out yet from the Kennedy Center. Even if the people I know who worked there are gone now, just considering how many times I’ve played there, the fact I’m a local artist? It’s pretty disappointing, but somewhat expected now, I guess.