{"id":304,"date":"2026-06-03T22:44:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=304"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:44:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:44:38","slug":"trump-is-remaking-art-in-his-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=304","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Remaking Art in His Image"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of The<\/i> Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s a party without a little music? This year, the National Mall was meant to host a free summer concert series in celebration of the 250th anniversary of our nation\u2019s founding. Now President Trump may be replacing it with a different kind of performance: a supersize MAGA rally, with \u201cOnly Great Patriots invited.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concert series\u2014which is still officially on, at the time of writing\u2014had already been facing significant challenges before the president\u2019s proposal on Saturday. First announced last Wednesday by a Trump-affiliated organization called Freedom 250, the event was set to feature nine musicians, at least six of whom have since dropped out. The rapper Young MC wrote that he was put off by the event\u2019s \u201cpolitically charged\u201d nature; Celebrity Apprentice <\/i>alumnus Bret Michaels called it \u201cdivisive\u201d; and the country singer Martina McBride claimed that she\u2019d been presented with a chance to celebrate America in a nonpartisan way, but \u201cthat turned out to be misleading.\u201d (One wonders why these artists were so surprised: Freedom 250 does bill itself as nonpartisan, but it was created by Trump himself in an executive order.)<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s enjoinder to \u201ccancel\u201d the event was clearly a desperate bid to reframe an unfolding PR disaster. But it also revealed something about how Trump sees himself, and how he understands the role of art in bolstering his political project. In one post, he called himself \u201cthe Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.\u201d Trump often talks about his own greatness, but here he\u2019s nodding to\u00a0 his capacity for showmanship, positioning art and politics as interchangeable arenas for promoting the MAGA agenda.<\/p>\n

Take the Kennedy Center, which has been the primary site of Trump\u2019s attacks on the arts during his second term in office. Last year, not long after his inauguration, he fired the members of the institution\u2019s board who had been appointed by Joe Biden and replaced them with his own appointees. The new board elected Trump chairman of the Kennedy Center and voted to add his name to the building. (On Friday, a federal judge ruled that his name would need to be removed from the facade.) Trump has explicitly acknowledged his intent to remake an ostensibly nonpartisan stage in his own image: During his announcement of the Kennedy Center\u2019s annual honorees last year, he said that \u201cIf we make it our<\/i> kind of political,\u201d the institution will see greater success. Many performers withdrew from planned shows over the institution\u2019s new association with the president. Ticket sales plummeted. In February, Trump announced that the center would close for two years \u201cin honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country.\u201d Instead of celebrating the occasion with music or dance, the building would fall silent.<\/p>\n

Art is often political, and good art often creates controversy. But the White House isn\u2019t simply curating performances and exhibitions that carry political meaning; it\u2019s linking them to the president and his agenda. An executive order last year attempted to exert control over the exhibits at the Smithsonian museums, pushing the institution to promote \u201cAmerican greatness.\u201d Amid the cost-cutting efforts of DOGE, department officials tried to revoke National Endowment for the Humanities grants, pulling federal funding for projects that clashed with the administration\u2019s anti-DEI priorities.<\/p>\n

The federal government reoriented its plans for the Venice Biennale, the international arts expo, around similar mandates. Typically, the government outsources its artist-selection process to a committee of art-world experts. This year, the State Department gave that responsibility to Jenni Parido, a former pet-food-store owner with ties to the Trump administration. Some prominent\u00a0 artists turned down the chance to display their work in this newly Trump-inflected setting. The department\u2019s press release announcing the final pick, Alma Allen, suggested that his work showcased \u201cAmerican excellence.\u201d Reviewing the pavilion last month, my colleague Spencer Kornhaber called it \u201ca very pretentious form of propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more We\u2019ve Made Some Totally Planned Changes to America\u2019s 250th<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump is also putting his own personalstamp on the nation\u2019s aesthetics. This is especially apparent in the realm of design and architecture: A new White House ballroom will be clad in Trump\u2019s signature gold, and a proposed triumphal arch at Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C., will be topped with gilded statutes. (It will also be 250 feet tall, in honor of America\u2019s 250th anniversary.) As my colleague Sebastian Smee has written, the completed arch will not only look bad; it will also contort the meaning of the nearby Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. Trump has made the semiquincentennial all about himself\u2014if he gets his way, even our currency could bear his likeness.<\/p>\n

The White House clearly recognizes the soft power of art in promoting its agenda, even as it\u2019s unable to compel individual artists to accept its new status quo. The fact that the president sees a hyperpartisan rally as a reasonable substitute for a week of live music reflects his fixation on art\u2019s ability to reflect ideology. No performer can deliver the MAGA message as well as the president himself.<\/p>\n

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