Part One: The Washington National Opera Departure

I'm continuing to examine the Kennedy Center's troubles as a way to improve nonprofit arts literacy in smaller communities. Today I want to focus specifically on resident companies and why they matter.

I ran an arts center in a city of 80,000 for over a decade. We had multiple resident companies, and they were critical to both our financial model and our relationship with audiences. In smaller communities, a single arts center or performance venue often serves as the only cultural infrastructure for a large geographical region. The ability to host local third-party cultural organizations can create long-term stability by connecting and cultivating audiences across an entire area.

The value of resident companies extends far beyond simple venue rental or programming fill. These organizations do the patient, unglamorous work of audience cultivation that host venues often have strained capacity to manage alone. A resident opera company doesn't just bring productions, it brings subscribers who attend multiple times per season, donors who feel ownership of the work, education programs that introduce new audiences to the art form, and community relationships built over years or decades. The host venue benefits from this cultivation without bearing the full cost or risk of building those relationships from scratch. When audiences develop loyalty to a resident company, they also develop familiarity and comfort with the venue itself, creating pathways for them to attend other programming. The resident company becomes an audience development engine that serves the entire facility's mission, not just its own programming slots.

When one of the Kennedy Center's long-standing resident companies departs after 54 years, we should all take note. The Kennedy Center and its current leadership continue to teach us how not to run a cultural facility, regardless of community size.

The Economics of Resident Organizations: Trading Volatility for Stability

The Washington National Opera's decision to leave the Kennedy Center represents more than an institutional divorce, it's a leadership failure that reveals fundamental misunderstandings about how performing arts venues actually work.

A Richard Grenell deleted social media post claimed that "having an exclusive Opera was just not financially smart" and that bringing in touring operas would offer flexibility. This fundamentally misunderstands how resident arts organizations function within host institutions. This isn't just wrong, it's backwards.

Resident organizations like the Washington National Opera provide predictable, stable revenue streams in an inherently volatile industry. A third-party organization focused on building and serving its own audience base takes significant financial and operational risk off the host institution's shoulders. The opera company cultivates relationships with donors, builds subscription audiences, manages production costs, and develops programming expertise, all specialized work that requires sustained institutional memory and community trust.

Touring productions, by contrast, represent speculation. You're betting that audiences will show up for companies and productions they have no relationship with, marketed by an institution that has systematically alienated much of its core constituency. Without the groundwork of cultivating a DC-based opera-going audience—the season ticket holders, the donor base, the education programs, the community relationships, you're essentially running a series of one-night stands and hoping each one succeeds.

The Washington National Opera wasn't "exclusive" in the sense Grenell implies—it was a strategic partner managing audience development and financial risk. The affiliation agreement signed in 2011 came specifically because the opera was facing financial challenges. The Kennedy Center provided infrastructure and the opera provided specialized programming expertise and its own revenue generation. This is how cultural institutions create sustainable models.

Now the Kennedy Center is assuming all that risk themselves, with a smaller staff, a politicized brand, alienated donors, and boycotting artists. They'll need to:

• Negotiate individual contracts with touring companies

• Market each production independently without the benefit of subscription sales

• Build audiences for companies with no local presence or relationship

• Compete with other venues for touring productions

• Cover costs upfront without the opera's donor base

This is "flexibility" only in the sense that being unemployed is "flexible." You have more options, but less security and fewer resources to pursue them.

The Absence of Vision: Where's the Audience Strategy?

Perhaps most damning is what we don't hear from Grenell: any coherent strategy for building audiences in an extraordinarily challenging environment.

The electoral math in Washington DC is stark. Donald Trump won 6.47% of the city's vote. While tourism provides a more diverse potential audience base, the Kennedy Center's aggressive politicization, the name change, the explicit "NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA" messaging, the national anthem requirements, the hiring of culture war warriors, has made the institution itself a political statement.

Where's the audience development plan? How does Grenell intend to:

• Rebuild donor relationships after a well-documented collapse in contributions?

• Attract artists when high-profile names are publicly canceling commitments?

• Sell tickets when the institution's brand has become politically charged?

• Maintain tourism appeal when the building itself has become controversial?

• Cultivate local audiences in a city where 93.53% of voters rejected the president whose name now appears on the building?

These aren't rhetorical questions—they're the fundamental strategic challenges facing the institution. And we've heard nothing from Grenell suggesting he's even thinking about them, let alone has plans to address them.

Instead, we get "our patrons clearly wanted a refresh,” a claim made without evidence about patrons who are, by all accounts, fleeing the institution.