Former Kennedy Center president refutes Trump’s critique of ‘bad management’

Deborah Rutter, the former Kennedy Center president who was fired by President Donald Trump in a major shakeup of the institution, is rejecting criticisms of her tenure.

In February, Trump abruptly ousted Rutter, as well as board chair and major donor David Rubenstein and board members appointed by President Joseph Biden. Trump’s newly-elected board voted him in as the new chair.

At a dinner with the Kennedy Center board Monday evening, Trump said the previous leadership spent millions of dollars. “I don’t know where they spent it,” he said. “They certainly didn’t spend it on wallpaper, carpet or painting.”

Also in the video, current Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell claimed the “deferred maintenance of the Kennedy Center is criminal” and that a review of previous years’ budgets “found $26 million in phantom revenue.” He said he planned to “refer this to the U.S. attorney’s office.”

In response to the assertions, Rutter wrote in a statement, “I am deeply troubled by the false allegations regarding the management of the Kennedy Center being made by people without the context or expertise to understand the complexities involved in nonprofit and arts management.”

Rutter’s statement was emailed to the media Tuesday and is now posted on her website.

She continued, “This malicious attempt to distort the facts, which were consistently, transparently and readily available in professionally audited financial reports, recklessly disregards the truth.”

The Kennedy Center is a vast performing arts hub in Washington, D.C., with seven theaters and some 2,000 performances and events per year. On a tour of the center in March, Trump said it was “in tremendous disrepair,” and claimed “bad management” was the cause.

While Rutter did not address the president’s allegation that the center was in “disrepair” in her statement, she responded to NPR via email, saying, “Due to the limited and decreased funding from the federal government, there is a backlog of maintenance that has been prioritized to mirror the appropriated funding.”

She added “This is true of federal buildings and properties in Washington and across the country.”

In 2021 the Smithsonian, another institution that receives federal funds, estimated its deferred maintenance backlog at more than $1 billion.

A House committee has approved a proposal for an enormous budget increase for the Kennedy Center. It would allocate more than $250 million to the Center, most of which would go towards repairs. That’s a sixfold increase from the roughly $40 million the center has received from Congress each year.

In her statement, Rutter said that in each of her 10 years as president, the Kennedy Center’s budget “served as a blueprint for our operations and programming — standard and responsible practice in arts management.”

She noted that the budget was approved by Kennedy Center’s board, which included appointees from Trump’s first term as President. Trump appointed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to the Kennedy Center’s board in 2020 and she still serves. At the time she was appointed, she was a member of Trump’s legal team.

Rutter continued, “Perhaps those now in charge are facing significant financial gaps and are seeking to attribute them to past management.”

Asked about Grenell’s claim of finding “$26 million in phantom revenue,” Rutter told NPR, “We have no idea what they are referring to.”

The Kennedy Center claims previous leadership misled the board. In a statement, the center’s current Chief Financial Officer, Donna Arduin, wrote, “The former leadership built a broken budget with an operating deficit of 100 million dollars and a bottom-line deficit of 26 million dollars.”

Former board chair David Rubenstein refuted the allegation. “With full transparency, the financial reports were reviewed and approved by the Kennedy Center’s audit committee and full board as well as a major accounting firm,” he wrote in a statement.

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and the layoffs that followed under Grenell’s leadership have angered many artists and led to canceled performances by people like actor Issa Rae and musician Rhiannon Giddens. A production of the Broadway musical Hamilton was also canceled.

This week, the Kennedy Center announced its 2025-2026 season, which includes the touring Broadway productions of The Outsiders and Moulin Rouge, the musical Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock LIVE and performances by the New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

At Monday night’s board dinner, Grenell mentioned the Kennedy Center productions of Les Misérables and Porgy and Bess and urged those in attendance “to go out and buy tickets.”

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.