The former director for Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center Richard Grenell reportedly threatened to rename the Israeli Lounge during an Oct. 7 event, telling the “mostly Jewish audience” that corporate donors would take interest in the historic space if they didn’t ante up.
The Kennedy Center’s first curator of visual arts and special programming Josef Palermo recounted Grenell’s alleged remarks in an in the “The Atlantic” on Thursday titled, “What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center.”
Palermo, who was with the center for 10 months last year, said that Grenell reportedly noted during an exhibition launch reception in the Israeli Lounge that a lack donations to support Trump’s planned renovations could mean doing away with the cultural space.
Read an excerpt of what Palermo observed below:
“Last fall, I organized an exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the Oct. Hamas attacks in the Israeli Lounge, featuring the paintings of an American Israeli artist. Speaking at the opening reception, Grenell warned the mostly Jewish audience that unless donors came forward to sponsor the space and pay for renovation costs, the lounge would be given away to a new donor. ‘It certainly would be a shame if we lost this room to a corporation or an individual and it was no longer the [Israeli] lounge,’ he said. Such a strong-armed fundraising pitch, at an event commemorating a pogrom, struck many of us in the room as inappropriate. I was mortified.”
Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Palermo, who was laid off from his first-ever role at the Center amid Trump’s year-long overhaul, also elsewhere detailed for the Atlantic that other lounges have been renamed, including the Circles Lounge to SyberJet Lounge.
Since the president’s take over of the cultural center in early 2025, high-profile staffers have exited the institution, performers and touring productions have canceled shows, subscribers have canceled en masse — and Trump has initiated a two-year shutdown for supposed renovations.
