The Donald Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center has led to widespread cancellations, plunging ticket sales, and, ultimately, being shuttered for two years starting this summer.
But a former staffer is shedding new light on just how far the Trump administration grifted after the takeover of the arts institution before he, along with other staffers, was shown the door.
Josef Palermo was the Kennedy Center’s first curator of visual arts and was hired by former director Ric Grenell, despite having never voted for Trump, to build out the visual arts program for visitors when no show was running.
But in an essay in The Atlantic, Palermo wrote that what he observed, “is far worse than the public knows.”
He detailed how one of the red flags was the sudden decision to sell sponsorships for the lounges at the Kennedy Center, such as the Israeli Lounge, Chinese Lounge, Circles Lounge (formerly the Russian Lounge), and African Room, which had been around since the center’s opening.
Palermo wrote that the Circles Lounge was renamed the SyberJet Lounge after an aircraft manufacturer whose CEO, Trevor Milton, received a pardon from Trump last March.
Milton was convicted of securities fraud in 2022 and faced four years in prison. But the Wall Street Journal reported that he attended the Kennedy Center Honors last year and mingled with celebrities inside the SyberJet Lounge, which was renamed last October after his company spent millions on the sponsorship, just over six months after his pardon.
Palermo also wrote how he organized an exhibit in the Israeli Lounge to commemorate the October 7 attack. The name of the room comes from its decorations celebrating Judaism and music, which were paid for by the Israeli government.
But speaking to the largely Jewish gathering there last fall, Grenell warned that if donors didn’t come forward to sponsor the space and pay for renovations, the lounge would be given away. Palermo recalled him saying it would “be a shame if we lost this room to a corporation or an individual and it was no longer the [Israeli] lounge.”
“Such a strong-armed fundraising pitch, at an event commemorating a pogrom, struck many of us in the room as inappropriate. I was mortified,” Palermo wrote.
Meanwhile, the Africa Room has a plaque that reads “A Tribute to America’s Intelligence Community.”
“This was a strange choice, not least when you considered the named donor for the new room: Gaurav Srivastava,” Palermo noted.
Srivastava’s former business partner accused him of scamming millions by posing as a CIA operative, the WSJ reported.
Items removed from the room were handmade textiles from across the continent, a sculpture from Ghana and a pair of doors carved from 700-year-old wood. While Palermo wrote that he never saw what happened to the items, a staffer told The Atlantic the items are now in the building’s archives.
At the same time, he accused one of Grenell’s “top lieutenants” of texting him to ask if he could do something with an artist whose work Grenell owned.
“Displaying that artist’s work could have raised their prices at auction and benefited Grenell, so doing so would have been a potential ethical breach. I ignored the request,” he wrote.
He also said that Grenell told him to “get rid of” the center’s permanent art collection so they could decorate with new art after the renovations are complete.
“I was taken aback by his cavalier attitude. If the donors of the works didn’t want to pay for their removal, he said, we could put them up for auction or give them away,” Palermo wrote.
Palermo was told not to do anything when he reported the order to another top leader at the center.
Grenell did not respond to The Atlantic’s multiple requests for comment. The Daily Beast asked Grenell and the Kennedy Center for comment.
