A former curator at the Kennedy Center is pulling back the curtain on the chaos that President Donald Trump’s takeover has caused inside the historic institution.
Josef Palermo, the center’s first curator of visual arts, sat down with MS NOW’s Jackie Alemany to discuss why he believes what happened behind closed doors was “far worse than the public knows.”
Palermo, who was abruptly fired in late March, described what Alemany referred to as “a pattern of pay-for-play,” where “everything that the center did was centered around having a close association” and “access” to Trump.
The former curator recounted one example when VIP tickets to a showing of “Les Misérables” at which the president would be in attendance were listed at “astronomical prices,” some as high as $2 million. “I remember thinking that was strange,” he told Alemany.
According to Palermo, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center took a toll on the institution. After the president’s name was added to the outside of the center’s building, many artists were “no longer interested in collaborating” on exhibitions, fearing the institution had been politicized by the administration.
Palermo told Alemany that while the president’s influence loomed over every decision, he places blame for the mismanagement “squarely at the feet of Ric Grenell,” the former president of the center who was appointed by Trump.








