Pack the House PURPLE

Demystifying the finances of the Kennedy Center is a vast endeavor, namely because most of the Center’s finances and governance are shrouded in secrecy behind a big red velvet curtain.  It doesn’t help matters that we are consistently being fed propaganda by Grenell and the Kennedy Center spokespeople. From them, we hear they are saving the Center, have collected record-breaking donations, and are seeing ticket revenue sharply increase. However, if you look at their tax filings and audits, you can begin to understand how the Kennedy Center finances work.

As we witness Trump’s hand-picked Ambassador and Board sink the Kennedy Center into the Potomac, lots of rhetoric about its finances abounds. There are significant misunderstandings about the Kennedy Center as an institution, including how it is funded and operates. At first glance, someone from my home state of Kentucky may see an arts institution in Washington, DC, with an operating budget of $260 million a year and say, ‘Whoa, why do the arts in DC need so much of my tax dollars?’ The answers may give a more sober response.

Did you know federal dollars for the Kennedy Center only fund the physical building- a presidential memorial. Arts programming funding is separate and not tax dollars?

Nearly all of the arts programming at the Kennedy Center is privately funded. Only a “small” portion ($40 million) of its $260 million yearly budget (roughly 15%) comes from federal funds.  Plus, lest you think your tax dollars are funding crazy conceptual art performances, the money from tax dollars is solely used for building maintenance, upkeep, capital improvements and security.

In addition to being a living, breathing performing arts center, it is also a presidential memorial dedicated to John F. Kennedy.  In the same way that our tax dollars pay for our national symbols like the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial, they also pay for the Kennedy Center Memorial.

In a normal year, the Kennedy Center gets $40 million for capital improvements and maintenance. However, in 2025, Trump and Republicans included $257 million in their budget for those expenses at the Center.  Again, these expenses are limited to capital improvements, building maintenance, and security.  That money does not fund the Kennedy Center’s artistic planning and programming.  Most of this money from 2025 will go towards deferred maintenance and capital improvements at the Center.

see image below created by Miriam Cappellan

A large share of the $257 million sent to the Kennedy Center this year was plundered from the National Endowment for the Arts.  That means that your tax dollars, which would have gone to your local communities for a bluegrass or jazz festival or your local museum, are now being funneled into Trump’s vanity project at the Kennedy Center. Don’t get me wrong. It is good that Congress is investing in the long-term future of the Kennedy Center as a building and presidential memorial. The problem is that this money was taken from NEA at the expense of arts programming across the nation. Money that was set aside for local arts funding is now being used to maintain the Kennedy Center’s physical structure. 

The remaining $220 million of the Kennedy Center’s annual budget comes from two main sources: Revenue (tickets, parking concessions) and public, private, and corporate donations. Yes, part of those public donations includes federal money.  Like many arts organizations in small communities across the country, the Kennedy Center receives federal grant funding for its arts and educational programming.

Did you know the Kennedy Center board has always been bi/non-partisan and its leaders have been selected after a national search?

This brings us to the Kennedy Center’s governance structure  Since its inception the Kennedy Center was established as a public-private partnership governed by a non-partisan board of directors, who are appointed by presidents.  

Over the years, the Board of Directors overlapped, and the Board operated on a nonpartisan basis.  Usually, the president does not replace his predecessor’s appointees.  That all changed when Trump came into office in 2025 and 1) named himself as the Chairman, 2) dismissed all Democrat appointed board members, and 3) had his hand-picked man, Ric Grenell, installed into a position he admits he didn’t even want.

Usually, the president of the Kennedy Center is selected by the Board following a nationwide search for talented arts executives with experience managing arts budgets, building donor bases, and overseeing operations. All previous Kennedy Center presidents had extensive experience in arts management, donor development, and financial management. This time, President Trump picked a guy low on his list for any other job and said, “Here’s a bone fetch. Or in Trump’s words, “Welcome to Showbiz.” Grenell’s lack of interest is evident in his lackluster performance to date.

Ric Grenell’s sole job as the Kennedy Center president was to keep the ship afloat.  He was handed a ship that, over the decades, had been very successful in generating a healthy mix of revenue from the National Symphony, Washington National Opera, and dance, theater, and jazz programming.  Additionally, the Center routinely brings in big acts like Hamilton, Wicked, and Dear Evan Hansen to buoy budgets with popular Broadway runs. Hamilton alone was projected to generate nearly $ 50 million in ticket revenue in 2026.  

Did you know that the National Symphony and Washington National Opera are separate nonprofit organizations with their own boards, artistic directors, donors, and budgets?

Both the National Symphony and Washington National Opera retain independent artistic, leadership, governance, and financial structures. They also came to the Kennedy Center with their own substantial endowments.  Their funds appear to be commingled with those of the Kennedy Center at large, but they are siloed off.  When you donate and specify you want your money to go to the Opera or Symphony, those allocations are respected.  Moreover,  ticket revenue for the Symphony and Opera go directly to supporting the musicians in those organizations. 

For the most part, the NSO and WNO are self-sustaining institutions. They run on ticket revenue from their own performances, donations, and other grants. For example, the Washington National Opera has an annual budget of approximately $ 24 million. The bulk of that budget, nearly $21.5 million, comes from Opera ticket revenue and corporate and individual donors. The Kennedy Center provides the opera with approximately $ 2.75 million per year. The center also helps support the Opera by pooling resources for fundraising, box office sales, and marketing.

As you can see, the substantial bulk of WNO’s budget comes from YOU, the audience member who buys tickets to performances. In turn, your ticket dollars go directly to the musicians in The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the artists on stage, the backstage hands, and all the artists who make an opera grand.

The self-sustainable model is dependent on steady and healthy ticket sales revenue. Due to boycott efforts and empty halls for most of 2025, both institutions’ budgets are feeling severe financial pain.

It should also be noted that the Kennedy Center’s combined endowment appears to be extremely low for an organization of its size.  According to information, the Kennedy Center endowment is around $163 million (not even one year’s worth of operating expenses).  However, we also know that the Symphony currently has an endowment of around $50 million and has launched a campaign to raise it to $100 million. The National Opera also came into the Kennedy Center with a substantial endowment. 

If the Kennedy Center were to lose the endowments for the National Symphony and National Opera, it would likely face a considerable shortfall. Though untangling these organizations and their finances is no small feat. In regular times, both the NSO and WNO generate substantial revenue and donations. Without them and their devoted audiences, the center would be adrift.

All of this is to say that there are many interconnected strings between the NSO and WNO and the Kennedy Center, but they both retain their independence in artistic planning and fundraising. The affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center allows both to pool resources for specific overhead and administrative issues while retaining artistic and programmatic independence..

How does an arts organization routinely bring in nearly $183 million in private, corporate, and foundation donations? 

By lots of relationship building in the philanthropic and corporate communities, and by engaging with individual donors. As a former Ambassador, Grenell should have some confidence in diplomatic maneuvering to assuage donors from all political and corporate interests. Reality is stark.

Instead, Ambassador Grenell came in like a wrecking ball.  On the tailcoats of Trump’s bombastic tweets declaring “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR ANY OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” Grenell continued the screed against woke art. These actions have almost caused the ship to capsize.  Calls for mass boycotts, which have largely been successful, have led to empty performance venues and precipitous losses in ticket revenue.  Only through comping (giving away free tickets), steeply discounting tickets, and closing off upper levels for seating have the performance halls managed to attract any semblance of an audience.

Artists who refuse to perform (including the $50 million revenue powerhouse Hamilton) and a general erosion of the Kennedy Center’s once-esteemed brand as a nonpartisan center of artistic excellence that served as an example of how the arts could thrive in America have bruised the Center’s reputation beyond recognition.

Once you sully an institution’s reputation and alienate all its supporters, audience members, donors, and expert artistic programmers from your cause, you have very little left to work with.  That is the reality Grenell is finding these days as he tries to make sense of the cracks he created in the Kennedy Center’s pillars of funding.

Do you know how much it costs to run a symphony and an opera?

Raw numbers for operating a symphony orchestra sound huge.  $40 million for a symphony orchestra? First, you have to take into account that the orchestra has 90 musician employees, plus backstage and administrative staff.  The bulk of their budget is composed of salaries for musicians and staff who create the entertainment you enjoy. Just like it costs millions to produce movies, it costs millions to produce live music entertainment. I guarantee you no musicians are getting paid millions like the movie stars in the films you watch.

Grand opera is even more expensive to produce.  Not only do you have a full-time orchestra, but you also have set and costume designers, backstage hands, lighting technicians, singers, and dancers.  Opera really is the amalgamation of all art forms rolled into one. And its budgets reflect the grandness of producing operas.

While it may be easy to get overwhelmed by the high numbers of dollars that go into the performing arts, the reality is that most of every dollar we spend on a ticket to the symphony or opera goes to pay the salary of a musician in the orchestra, the costume or set designer, and the backstage hands and technicians. Yes, supporting the arts is expensive.  But behind every concert, opera play, or ballet are numerous individual union workers whose livelihoods depend on it. Their purpose in work is to provide top-quality entertainment for you, the audience. The thousands of people who bring a paycheck home from the Kennedy Center every two weeks are our neighbors and friends, providing for their families and paying for healthcare based on the ticket dollars we spend when we go out to be entertained.

How many of us pay for movie tickets every month, Netflix subscriptions, or pay through the advertisements we watch on TV?  Similarly, the individuals who create entertainment for us on stage require funding to continue their work.

What about Dance, Theater and Jazz Programing?

All other revenue, excluding NSO and WNO ticket revenues, falls under a single budget line: “Kennedy Center productions.” This includes ticket revenues from dance, theater, and jazz programming.

Generally, for traveling Broadway shows, the Kennedy Center contracts with a show for a certain amount and for a certain number of performances. Then, the Kennedy Center handles the marketing and ticketing, retaining all ticket revenue from a show. For example, in 2026, the Center was set to host Hamilton for over 100 performances. They would pay Hamilton around $50 million and were projected to earn $50 million in revenue.

For dance companies that tour, they engage in a similar contractual relationship with the center. The Center contracts with ballet companies for a specified amount and also covers the companies’ expenses while the show is in town. (accommodation and per diem). Then all ticket revenue returns to the Kennedy Center.

This model has proven very beneficial to both the Kennedy Center as a revenue producer, but also provides revenue for the traveling shows, as well as accommodations and per diem while dance companies are on tour. The Kennedy Center plugs into the larger dance ecosystem. Eliminate one, and the whole ecosystem collapses.

Soon, the water of the Potomac may start lapping up against Kennedy Center stages

The current state of affairs at the Kennedy Center is perilous.  Ric Grendel and Trump’s board came in like a wrecking ball and have disrupted the highly choreographed dance that the Kennedy Center had engaged in over the years with artists, donors, audience members, and corporate sponsors. 

Grenell and the board’s fiscal and reputational malpractice have put the center in uncharted choppy waters.  It takes diplomacy and tact to maintain a donor list in a city as polarized as Washington, DC.  And yet, for its 54-year history before Rick and the Icks, Kennedy Center leadership was able to find a balance where people of all political stripes believed in the Kennedy Center’s non-partisan brand of artistic excellence.  And they were willing to put their dollars where their mouths were.  Grenell has demonstrated that he lacks the skills of a diplomat and most certainly does not possess the skills to run a $ 260 million performing arts center.

With the entrance of the gladiators under Trump, it’s as if leadership doesn’t care if the whole thing burns to the ground.  Their bombastic rhetoric and engagement in culture wars show they are willing to stand by as the ship sinks into the Potomac.

Why Does Supporting the Arts In Washington DC Matter?

To a large extent, large national performing arts centers, such as the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center in New York, set the pace for the arts and performing arts ecosystem across the nation.

If we cannot find the political imperative to support robust and diverse arts programming in our nation’s capital, how do we think we will find the political will to also support the performing arts in communities across the country?

I am from a small town in western Kentucky. I distinctly remember in elementary school, the local Orchestra would come to schools and do educational outreach. Or in the summer, our city parks would host a bluegrass music festival and a W.C. Handy Blues festival. The local community college and Arts Alliance would bring in touring dance companies, such as the Paul Taylor Dance Company. If it were not for robust arts funding and the National Endowment for the Arts, this Kentucky boy might not have been exposed to a diverse array of performing arts and might not have become an avid symphony and opera fan.

In addition to its main stage performances, the Kennedy Center also serves as a stage for many local and regional performing arts groups. Dance, theater, and musical groups routinely perform on various stages at the Kennedy Center. Likewise, the Millennium stage, which Grenell has downsized by reducing its schedule by two days a week, provides a diverse group of performers with varying levels of visibility the opportunity to appear on stage and showcase their art form, both live in the hall and through their streaming platforms. These free performances, which were once available 365 days a year, offer the DC community, as well as tourists to DC, the opportunity to experience a vast array of performing arts at no cost.

Supporting and building artistic communities across the nation is just as crucial as building large-scale arts programming in our nation’s capital. A moral commitment to the arts also requires financial commitment from our government. Suppose we allow the mismanagement of the Kennedy Center to result in less artistic excellence in our nation’s premier performing arts center. What is left to trickle down to our small communities?

The Kennedy Center is Ours. Let’s Reclaim it and Hold Leadership Accountable

First, I would push back against the narrative that the Kennedy Center is making a political statement. Yes, leadership has taken the reins and engaged in bombastic partisan rhetoric. But, for the most part, most programming remains independent and retains the high level of artistic excellence we expect from the Kennedy Center.

Yes, we fear that this independence may be at risk. The only way Kennedy Center leadership can get away with perverting the artistic excellence at the Kennedy Center is if we let them. The Kennedy Center is not Trump or Grenell’s playground. The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a martyred president. It belongs to all Americans.

The Kennedy Center has stood on the banks of the Potomac for 54 years. Hopefully, it will remain there for many more years to come. However, unless we want it to be a hollowed out empty mid-century modern box on the Potomac, we have to reclaim it as our own.

We all have a right to to stand up and sit down in the seats at the Kennedy Center and demand that leadership ensures that the stages of the Kennedy Center reflect our hugely diverse nation. We can demand that many voices be represented in the halls of the center and that inclusion be valued. In addition to these values, leadership at the Center must ensure its own financial sustainability. Currently Grenell and the board are failing.

Sure, Grenell and President Trump have a mega horn to spout their “anti woke” rhetoric. But we have something more resonant and more powerful: Voices in solidarity and protest have always been more resonant than any mega horn.

JOIN OUR CHORUS of PROTEST! Pack the House PURPLE!