In January, Philip Glass announced that the premiere of his Symphony No. 15—commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center and inspired by the words of Abraham Lincoln—would be canceled, given that “the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony.” Glass was not the first artist to cut ties with the Kennedy Center following its rebranding by the White House, and on February 1, news broke that the 54-year-old venue would close on July 4 for a period of two years, ostensibly so that it could undergo a renovation. The Washington National Opera had already announced its departure from the center, and many of us who care about the cultural health of the nation’s capital now focused on the National Symphony Orchestra. Where would the NSO go? How would its musicians get paid? Could the ensemble—founded in 1930 and led over the course of its history by such noted conductors as Antal Doráti, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Leonard Slatkin—survive?
The orchestra’s future, you could argue, was already imperiled. Late last year, an article by Sylvie McNamara in Washingtonian magazine described what the Kennedy Center Concert Hall looked like in 2025: “deserted balconies and clusters of empty seats,” with attendance having fallen nearly 40 percent—a consequence, it would seem, of the Kennedy Center’s rebrand. But what effect was this protest having on the musicians of the NSO, artists with families to support and rent to pay, people who have no say in the macro-level decision-making affecting their workplace? McNamara profiled violist Daniel Foster, who has “spent his life in a notably apolitical job.” “Even skeptics will listen,” McNamara wrote, “when [Foster] speaks in more personal terms, when he explains what the boycotts have meant to him and his family.” This conundrum has no easy solution. Arts patrons have every right to make a political statement by choosing where to spend their money, but what about the collateral damage to artists and their livelihoods? The July shuttering of the Kennedy Center could spell the end of the NSO as we know it, but it’s possible that the passing bell was sounded many months earlier.
