Jonathan L. Fischer

For 13 months, President Trump has been the chairman, muse, occasional programmer, and featured artist at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His centrality—perhaps even more than his name on the building—helps explain why so many acts have abandoned the Washington, D.C., arts complex. (The most recent, the New York City Ballet, didn’t need to explain itself when it dropped a six-show run this week.)
Trump is undoubtedly on his way to remaking the Kennedy Center in his image.

Thirteen months was all it took to break the Kennedy Center. The news of Ric Grenell’s exit—or, his “plans to transition out of his role,” as Axios put it when breaking the story yesterday—suggests the end of a high period in which the Kennedy Center has continually pissed people off, and the beginning of one in which fewer and fewer people even notice it.  
One clue to this new direction can be found in Grenell’s apparent replacement.