Unless the courts intervene, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will shut down this July for two years as part of a roughly $250 million renovation.

In the lead-up, there's been a wave of layoffs and a controversial rebranding under President Trump's allies.

But the questions are mounting. Is a full shutdown really necessary?

Were artists critical of Trump, pushed aside.

And did the center's finances deteriorate after new leadership took over?

Now, Yosef Palermo, an artist and arts organizer who served for the past 10 months

as the center's first curator of visual arts is speaking out. He was among those laid off

and has written a first-hand

account in the Atlantic, titled What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center. And he joins us now. Thank you

for being here. Thank you for having me. So in your piece, you noted that President Donald Trump

promised the best is yet to come for the Kennedy Center, but you write that instead you saw

cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center, but you write that instead you saw cronyism, incompetence, and a series

of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center going dark. What did that actually

look like in practice? Yeah, I mean, the bizarre moves that I was referring to are largely

centered around fundraising and the tactics that were used to fundraise.

And a lot of that seemed to be positioning the proximity of the president

in his chairmanship of the Kennedy Center and essentially selling access to that.

Through things like the preview event of Les Miserables, there was an evening last summer

where it was reported that tickets were going for $2 million

to sit near the president in his presidential box and attend a VIP reception.

I was also made aware of six-figure tickets in the orchestra level, just because it was in the same room as the president

for that performance.

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