Folds tells Congress Trump's Kennedy Center takeover broke its business model
Musician Ben Folds has warned a US Congressional forum that Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center destroyed the venue’s financial stability and turned a cultural institution into a political tool.
Ben Folds, the former artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center’s National Symphony Orchestra, told a Congressional forum yesterday that Donald Trump’s takeover of the institution destroyed its financial stability. Folds stepped down from his nearly decade-long post in 2025 when Trump was appointed chairman. “I think most of us understand that when you politicise art, you’ve got propaganda,” Folds told lawmakers, arguing the intervention “broke its once-proven successful business model”.
The operational fallout was immediate as high-profile acts boycotted the venue, including jazz musician Chuck Redd, veteran septet The Cookers, and New York dance troupe Doug Varone and Dancers. Redd faced a $1 million damages demand from the centre’s president after pulling out. Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz also joined the boycott, stating the venue “no longer represents the apolitical place for free artistic expression it was founded to be” and adding: “There’s no way I would set foot in it now.”
Beyond the balance sheet, Folds said the politicisation rendered the venue toxic for performers. He stated he could no longer trust that booked artists “would be safe from retribution” if they criticised the administration on stage. He noted that simply accepting or declining an invitation to perform had become a political statement, pointing to singer Yasmin Levy, who was booed by hecklers during a September concert after criticising the board.
The crisis escalated when the Trump-appointed board voted to rename the venue the “Trump-Kennedy Center”, a move a judge later blocked for lacking Congressional approval. Following the court order, all references to Trump were removed from the building last month. Trump had previously accused the “radical left” of wanting the centre to fail rather than allowing him to transform it.
Yesterday’s forum framed the Kennedy Center as part of a broader pattern of what lawmakers labelled Trump’s “vanity projects”. Alongside White House renovations and a new Washington arch sculpture, the takeover was described as an effort that “wasted hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars”. For European cultural sectors, where major venues often operate using complex public-private funding models, the Kennedy Center's collapse highlights how political interference can instantly destabilise a financially viable arts institution.
