The Kennedy Center board on Thursday voted to again attach President Donald Trump’s name to the performing arts center, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) and two other people with knowledge of the vote said, its latest attempt to honor the president after a judge blocked an effort to rename the Kennedy Center after him in May.
The board — which is mostly Trump loyalists after the president dismissed Democratic-appointed members on the historically bipartisan body — voted to “honor the President’s contribution with an inscribed recognition on the building,” with the new signage reading: “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”
The board also voted Thursday to shutter the main building for two years, the culmination of Trump’s long-term effort to make sweeping changes to the performing arts institution.
“This morning’s decision to close the Center and the surprise agenda item to put Donald Trump’s name back on the building was more of the same,” Beatty, an ex-officio board member, said in a statement that came after the initial publication of this report. “This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed. I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”
The two people who initially described the votes were granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s the second time the board has voted to wind down operations at the Kennedy Center to make way for repairs, even as critics charge the White House has only pushed for a temporary closure to mask lagging ticket sales associated with Trump’s overhaul of the space.
A federal judge who previously blocked the shutdown plan would need to sign off on the closure.
“The court already ruled against the board when it bowed to Trump's demands," Norm Eisen, who represented Beatty in her lawsuit against the White House over the renaming of the Kennedy Center, said in a statement. "Now, the defendants must answer for their actions — again — in court.”
The president wrested control of the Kennedy Center’s operations shortly after returning to the Oval Office last year. He assumed the chairmanship of the institution, dismissed several key trustees and named a close ally to run the center on an interim basis.
Close Trump confidants including Sergio Gor, Dan Scavino and Susie Wiles are among the trustees Trump has appointed.
The new-look board last year voted — “unanimously,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt — to rename the center after Trump in addition to former President John F. Kennedy. A judge blocked the new moniker in May, and Trump’s name came off the main building’s white facade in mid-June.
The judge’s decision — as well as his ruling blocking the institution’s closure — prompted the president to declare on Truth Social that he would work “with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”
“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into “NEVER NEVER LAND,” Trump wrote in May.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the name change or closure.
The board was presented with two proposals for renovating the institution, according to a document viewed by POLITICO that was sent to trustees before the meeting. They went with the first option, to mostly close the center — shifting operations to the REACH, another building on the campus, and closing the main building.
National Symphony Orchestra concerts and other "signature events" would be moved offsite. But the center, the report said, “maintains its statutory cultural mandate during a facility shutdown.”
“This program renovates an historic structure and is not a wholesale rebuilding of the site; character -defining historic elements will be restored and preserved,” the report read.
The other option entailed a four-year partial renovation while maintaining operations throughout the Kennedy Center. The report's authors wrote that the remedy would be “invasive,” and that “patron safety will be an ever-present challenge.”
“Partial Access. Higher Cost. Prolonged Impact,” they wrote.
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