New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled; The New York Times, December 29, 2025

Adam Nagourney and Neil Vigdor, The New York Times ; New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled

[Kip Currier: The principles of integrity and character are unsurprisingly alien to Richard Grenell. Artists are likely canceling Kennedy Center engagements because they don't want to be associated with an administration that has attacked free expression and the diversity of human experience, financially diminished the arts, as well as science, and that has violated federal law by adding Donald Trump's name to an arts organization memorializing our slain 35th President, John F. Kennedy Jr.

Standing up for values one believes in -- values that are bigger than oneself -- is an example of moral courage, not "derangement".]

[Excerpt]

"A veteran jazz ensemble and a New York dance company have canceled events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, intensifying the fallout at one of the nation’s pre-eminent arts centers after it was renamed to include President Trump...

The Cookers did not give a reason for the decision in a statement on Monday that said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice."...

Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, also said on Monday that it was canceling two performances in April that had been intended to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Mr. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out.

“It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating,” he said in an email.

Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s chairman, said in a statement on Monday night that the artists canceling shows were “far-left political activists” and that they had been booked by previous leadership. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said."