At Issue: The Assault on America’s Cultural Institutions Featuring The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott

Date and Time for this Past Event

• Wednesday, May 14, 2025  

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Hill Center launched its new public affairs discussion series, At Issue, in April. The series will examine the many critical issues we are faced with today. Kennicott will address the growing onslaught impacting America’s cultural institutions, including museums, performing arts centers, libraries, arts funding, and public broadcasting.

In a recent Post article titled “Yes, Donald Trump could destroy the Kennedy Center. Or worse,” Kennicott wrote, “Until a week ago, it was unthinkable that the president of the United States would take direct control of the nonpartisan Kennedy Center for the Arts, fire board members not deemed personally loyal to him, replace them with members of his inner circle and install a widely disliked political operative with little experience in the arts as interim director. But now the thought has been thought, so two more previously unthinkable things must also be considered: Can Donald Trump destroy the Kennedy Center? Or will he use it in the usual way that authoritarians have used the arts in the past, as a vehicle for Trumpian propaganda?”

Philip Kennicott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of The Washington Post. He has been on staff at The Post since 1999, first as classical music critic, then as culture critic. In 2011, he combined art and architecture into a beat focused on visual culture and public space.