Illustrations by Palesa Monareng.

A Deeper Look at Trump’s Kennedy Center Debacle

What’s going on at DC’s top arts institution—and what it means for people who love it most.

Written by Sylvie McNamara, Kate Corliss, Andrew Beaujon and Dara Mathis | Published on June 25, 2026

As of this writing, the Kennedy Center is in limbo. No programming is scheduled after July 5, though a court said the institution couldn’t close. President Trump announced that he wants nothing more to do with the place, yet he remains the chairman of its board. We have no idea what will happen next. Will the opera company return? Will the National Symphony Orchestra play there this fall? Will anyone play there, or will the center languish while remaining nominally open? What we do know is that the chaos this administration has wrought—the politicized takeover, the exodus of staff, the plunging ticket sales and reputational devastation—will take years and years to undo. And we also know that the Kennedy Center is beloved. It’s an institution that incubates great artists, delights audiences, and reminds our nation of its highest ideals: free expression, individuality, curiosity across difference, shared joy. Here’s our tribute to the Kennedy Center, a series of stories about what’s happening there and how it all feels to those who care deeply about the place.

The Superfan

Don Carlsen Has Seen It All

A former cab driver has spent the past 50 years attending basically every NSO performance



On Gianandrea Noseda’s final night conducting at the Kennedy Center before its planned closure, the first person who stood to applaud was an elderly man at the front of the hall. He looked a bit like Tiresias, with a white beard and rheumy eyes, pants cinched over his ample frame. This was Donald Carlsen, age 78, a retired cab driver who’s perhaps the National Symphony Orchestra’s biggest fan.

For more than 50 years, Carlsen has been a fixture at the Kennedy Center. Night after night, he sits in the same seat—at the very front, in the very center—basking in the orchestra’s sound, hoping he’ll be transported to heaven. That’s how he puts it: that sometimes at a concert, “there’s a greatness where you feel like you’re going to heaven, which happens once every ten or 12 times.” He lives for it. That night, he found the NSO’s performance of Puccini’s Suor Angelica breathtaking but not quite celestial, though he said that for one exquisite moment at the end, he’d felt tugged in a heavenward direction.

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