Actress Julianne Moore posted a shocked post on Instagram this week. Her children’s book Freckleface Strawberry From 2007, about a girl who learns to embrace the freckles on her face instead of being ashamed of it, it appeared in the United States for ‘research’ from libraries of military schools, intended for children whose parents in the US Army work. Moores book appears to be on a list of books that are being investigated for the diversity restrictions of Pete Hegseeth, the American defense minister.
The removal of Moores book is the most recent example of the influence that Donald Trump is trying to get on American culture. Immediately executive order Trump put an end to all federal programs that focus on diversity, equality and inclusion. With major consequences for the art world in the United States.
Perhaps the most discussed consequence of this new cultural policy is that for the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts. This leading center for the performing arts in Washington will get a new board, with Trump itself as chairman. The center, where the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera, among others, have their base, and where there are more than 2,000 performances every year, according to Trump, “in Woke”.
“Through history, autocrats and dictators understood the power of art,” wrote Olivia Troye – a national security officer in the White House during Trumps first term – recently in the play ‘Erasing Dissent: Trump’s Slow Burn War on the Arts’. She refers to Hitler, Stalin, Kim Il Sung: Leaders who “wanted to silence artists, whether they wanted to make an instrument of their agenda.”
Troye continues: “In Trumps second term we see comparable patterns. His recent acquisition of the Kennedy Center and the Ban on Drag performances are not on their own, they are part of a wider, cunning attempt to reform American culture to his image. ” She concludes: “This is part of a broader concept to undermine democracy.”
That ‘silence’ also happened, for example, with modern artists who were exhibited by the Nazi regime in Munich in 1937. Those artists glorified, according to the Nazis, “the black race and their intellectual ideal shows crackling and idiots.” There were more objections to that modern art: farmers and soldiers were ridiculed and artists were out to propagate a culture struggle that was a danger to society, according to the moral of the ‘Entartete Art’ exhibition.
Protest
The new policy in the US has detached a wave of protest. After Trump was appointed as chairman of the board, several artists have canceled their cooperation with the Kennedy Center. Shonda Rhimes, the producer of the series, among others Bridgerton andGray’s Anatomyhas left the Supervisory Board. Actress Issa Rae, who would perform for a sold -out room on March 16, canceled. Opera singer Renée Fleming, singer-songwriter Ben Folds and others also said their cooperation in the Kennedy Center with the announcement. This week it was announced that the center of the youth musical Finn The makers say that it can be seen as a ‘metaphor for the LGBTQ+experience’. ” We will not be silenced”, Responded them in an Instagram post.
In the meantime, hundreds of artists signed a letter of protest to the Federal Public Fund for Art, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), after it became known that the Fund is set new conditions for money, in line with Trumps policy. For example, no art is subsidized that supports ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’, or where what Trump calls ‘gender ideology’ plays a role in.
The NEA contributes to art that would otherwise not be there, but national financing does not have the same weight as in the Netherlands, for example. In 2025, the NEA distributed $ 210 million over fifty states. In addition, non-commercial art receives a subsidy at local and state level in the US, but contributions from the private sector and own income are more important for financing.
For Serafina Palandech, director of the Californian art organization Sebastopol Center for the Arts, center for Community Art In California, the new regulations under Trump are a reason to renounce the federal subsidy. Palandech late NRC Knowing: “We believe that art opposes tyranny, and that art gives a voice to the marginalized people within society. The Trump government tries to check the narrative of the country by limiting the art. These guidelines are only a small step in a strategy to silence resistance and opposition. The stock markets for 2026 are focused on nationalism and patriotism. If they are granted, art organizations must promise loyalty to the current government and remove inclusion initiatives and gender inclusivity from the organization. ”
Where large money is earned with art, new policy could be appropriate. American art market expert Magnus Resch, author of, among othersHow to collect art (2024) See a possible positive influence of Trumps policy on the market, he writesNRC. He expects Trumps to turn out to be beneficial for rich Americans who will therefore put their money into art faster. At the same time, he also sees a risk: the gap between the top of the market and emerging artists is increasing.
Large collectors will benefit from Trump, “but experimental artists can see a relapse in institutional and public support, making it more difficult for new voices to develop.”
New ‘golden ti jd’
The protest among artists does not alter the fact that in the meantime there is a major cultural change. The earlier resignation of the director of The National Archives, and the decisions of Disney, the National Gallery and the Smithsonian Institute to no longer follow the ‘dei policy’ (whereby diversity, equality and inclusion) is taken into account, the Removing the words ‘queer’ and ‘transgender’ from the Stonewall National Monument that was established for the rights of LBHTQI+persons: it fits in A vision of the ‘Golden Age’ for the US, a term that Trump often uses. The American artificial newspaper The Art Newspaper sees all these initiatives as an attempt to rewrite history from resentment, but also to erase part of it.
Trump also finds part of the cultural world by his side for his plans. He appoints the actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as ‘special ambassadors’ by Hollywood. Stallone sees a “second George Washington” in Trump. These actors have to put Hollywood back on the map, because, according to Trump, the “many of the industry in the past four years were lost abroad”.
There are also plans for a ‘National Garden of American Heroes’, a park with 250 ‘American heroes’ with which figures that had been knocked down by the Black Lives Matter protests were restored. It was a plan that Trump already had in 2020, but that Joe Biden was canceled. The 244 names that Trump made public were quickly dismissed by historians as a ridiculous and random. “No president can dictate who our historical heroes should be. This is not the Russia of Stalin ”, wrote the historian Michael Beschloss, who specialized in the presidency of the United States.
The cultural change desired by Trump, if it is up to him, also gets a face in the public space. The ‘Promotion Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture’ decree announces a plan that makes government buildings in traditional style again.
Also here quickly criticizedthis time from the American Institute of Architects, where it is also noted that it is up to local authorities to determine what and where is being built. Architecture historian Reinhold Martin (Columbia University) indicated the idea as: “This decree is meaningless and an attempt to use culture to radiate white superiority and political hegemony.”
He also did this 2020, with Trumps first attempt to change the architecture. Whether the chance of implementation at Trumps second term is still nil, and whether the objections will be heard at all is the question.