Every December, the Kennedy Center Honors stages its annual celebration of American culture. The opera house glows under the television lights, Washington’s elite trade black tie for red, yellow, and blue ribbons, and CBS offers the country a night of unity through the arts. Yet year after year, one glaring omission remains: Liza Minnelli.
At 79, Minnelli is more than a star. She is living cultural history — a performer whose life and work span Broadway, Hollywood, television, and cabaret. She is the rare artist whose name alone evokes an entire performance style: fearless, full-bodied, and impossible to forget. She is the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, yes, but her career has never been a footnote to theirs. She earned her place in the pantheon one ovation at a time, under her own searing spotlight.
The résumé reads like a Kennedy Center dream dossier. At just 19, she won her first Tony Award for Flora, the Red Menace. She went on to collect two more, plus a special Tony in 1974 for contributions to Broadway. She won an Oscar for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in Cabaret, a performance so definitive it remains the yardstick against which every movie musical turn is measured. She took home an Emmy for her groundbreaking TV special Liza with a Z, a master class in marrying music, dance, and personality. She holds a Grammy Living Legend Award and the rare EGOT distinction. Even France has paid tribute, naming her a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
It is difficult to imagine a more obvious candidate for the Honors.
Her fans have not been silent — they’ve organized petitions, written letters, and flooded social media urging the Kennedy Center to recognize her not only for her artistic accomplishments, but also for her tireless advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, and arts education.
The reasons for the omission are murky. Some suspect it’s a matter of style. The Kennedy Center has historically gravitated toward honorees who embody a certain understated elegance. Minnelli is anything but understated. She is high-gloss, high-drama, sequins and vulnerability in equal measure. She belts the note until it rattles the rafters. She dances as if her heart is trying to keep time with her heels. She is too much — and it is precisely that “too much” that has made her unforgettable for more than half a century.
But lately, the question has grown more complicated — and more urgent. Under President Donald Trump, the Kennedy Center Honors have changed. This year, Trump not only announced the honorees — Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor, and KISS — but also told reporters he was “98 percent involved” in selecting them. What was once a bipartisan, relatively apolitical celebration of the arts has taken on a distinctly personal, political cast.
For some artists, that shift is a deal-breaker. According to people close to Minnelli, the politicization of the Honors has made her reluctant — perhaps unwilling — to accept the award under the current conditions. And that reluctance matters because the Kennedy Center requires honorees to accept and attend in person. Without that agreement, the honor is not conferred.
Her former longtime publicist, who spent years lobbying for her to be recognized, put it bluntly after this year’s announcement: “The award is no longer worthy of her.”
That is the tragedy of the current moment. Minnelli’s body of work is unimpeachable, but the award meant to honor it has become a more complicated proposition. What was once an unambiguous thank-you to artists for shaping the nation’s cultural life is now entangled with the optics of presidential endorsement. Accepting could be read as aligning with a political brand; refusing could turn into a media spectacle.
The irony is that Minnelli has never been a political performer. In 1972, she publicly supported Democrat George McGovern’s presidential bid. Beyond that, there is no widely documented evidence of further political endorsements in her half-century career. Her art has always been about emotion, connection, and joy — about breaking down the distance between herself and her audience, not about campaigning for one side or another.
To honor her now, while she is still here to feel the warmth of the ovation, would be to honor not only her artistry, but the very purpose of the Honors themselves: to celebrate the people whose work has defined, enriched, and expanded American culture.
Minnelli belongs in the same company as other complicated, larger-than-life honorees — Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Cher — whose complexities made their tributes richer, not riskier. She is as much a part of our cultural DNA as any of them, a symbol of resilience and reinvention. She has survived personal losses, health challenges, and changing tastes in the industry, yet her influence endures. You can hear her in the phrasing of a Broadway belter, see her in the swagger of a pop diva, feel her in the unapologetic joy of a cabaret spotlight.
Waiting until the political climate changes risks another loss: time. Minnelli’s health has been uneven. She no longer performs eight shows a week. The Kennedy Center Honors, at their best, are about gratitude — about saying thank you before the lights dim.
The institution has a choice. It can let the politics of the moment dictate its legacy, or it can reach for something larger — the recognition that American culture is bigger than any single administration. Giving Liza Minnelli her flowers now would be more than a long-overdue correction. It would be a statement that the Kennedy Center’s highest honor belongs to the artists who have given us not just performances, but entire ways of feeling and seeing the world.
If they wait too long, that statement will never be made — and the balcony will still have its most conspicuous empty seat.
The time is now.
Rob Shuter is a celebrity journalist, talk-show host, former publicist, and author of The 4 Word Answer. He hosts Naughty But Nice with Rob, a top 20 iTunes podcast. Follow his latest columns at robshuter.substack.com.
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I mean, it would be quite a dilemma for her to accept the award from Trump at this point 😬
Liza should have been awarded the Kennedy Center Honors long ago. I’m one who has signed petitions in the past as well. They’ve failed to acknowledge so many… Eva Marie Saint at 101, Kim Novak at 92, Sophia Loren, Johnny Mathis, Ann-Margret, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Sir Michael Caine, Glenn Close, etc. However, with the CONVICTED FELON now in charge, many will simply turn it down & move on.
Now that it has sadly become the Trump Center, it will be even less likely for this to happen.
I agree 100% that Liza should have been a Kennedy Center Honoree by now. Few living artists have achieved the breadth, depth, and longevity that Liza has.
But as long Dean Cain is getting one that’s all that matters 😬