New Kennedy Center board elects Trump as chair. Rutter departs as president.

The Kennedy Center board of trustees voted Wednesday afternoon to install President Donald Trump as chairman of the board, cementing the plan Trump announced Friday to overhaul the storied arts institution with him at its helm. In a staff meeting that followed, Deborah Rutter said she was departing as president.

On Monday, Trump named former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center in a post on Truth Social. The position plunged leadership at the Kennedy Center into confusion, as the position “executive director” does not exist.

The refashioned board of trustees is made up entirely of Trump appointees. A termination email sent Friday by White House personnel office director Sergio Gor to several Biden-appointed board members read: “On behalf of President Donald Trump I’m writing to inform you your position on the board of the Kennedy Center is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”

The Kennedy Center removed the names of those who had been terminated from its list of board members and designated them as emeritus members. They included all of Biden’s appointees and its chair David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

Among the terminated board members were a mixture of political figures - such as former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Evan Ryan, the former White House Cabinet secretary and wife of former secretary of state Antony Blinken - and artists such as musician Jon Batiste and event planner Bryan Rafanelli.

This marks the first time a president has removed his predecessor’s board members at the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chair.

“So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday evening. “But we have, I guess, a whole new group of people going in. … I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke.”

The day before, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that “some of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on.” He also said he has not visited the center but receives reports on it.

“I didn’t want to go,” he said. “There was nothing I wanted to see.”

Trump has cited the Kennedy Center hosting drag shows as one reason he wanted to reshape the institution.

Before Trump announced his plans, the Kennedy Center was already in the midst of change. In late January, Rutter announced plans to step down as president of the institution at the end of 2025, at which point she would have held the position for 11 years.

“I don’t feel excited,” Rutter said in an interview with The Washington Post at the time. “If anything, I feel kind of sad. But I know that this is the right time.”

Rubenstein previously announced his own plans to step down in 2025, but a search for his replacement came up empty, so he agreed to remain chair until September 2026.

The center puts on more than 2,000 shows a year and receives roughly 2 million visitors.

It is funded by a mixture of government-appropriated funding, private donation and ticket sales revenue. Its operating budget in 2024 was $268 million. Of that, roughly $125 million came from earned revenue, such as ticket sales, $95 million from private donations and fundraising and $45 million from federal appropriations, with another $4 million drawn from its endowment.