Kennedy Center board votes to add Trump's name to the facade of the performing arts building
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kennedy Center board voted on Thursday to add President Donald Trump's name to the facade of the performing arts venue and move forward with a two-year closure, according to Rep. Joyce Beatty, a trustee through her position in Congress, and her lawyers.
A representative for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The moves set up a test of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled in May that letters affixed to the building and spelling out Trump's name were added illegally. The judge ordered them removed and at the same time blocked a closure that was set to take effect July 5, saying that an earlier board vote endorsing the move was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”
“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed," Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio who is an ex officio board member, said in a statement. "I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”
During Trump's second term, the Kennedy Center has become an unlikely — and highly visible — metaphor of presidential power. While he largely ignored the institution during his first round in Washington, Trump moved quickly to oust the institution’s leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building, a move that Cooper also declared illegal.
The Republican's name came down from the building in June but the area where it once stood is now covered by a massive tarp.
Trump's push to remake the nation's capital
The Kennedy Center moves are part of Trump's broader push to reshape the physical landscape of the nation's capital in ways that have few modern parallels.
He demolished the East Wing of the White House and is building a controversial ballroom in its place, though an appeals court ruled last week that construction should stop because Congress didn't approve the project. Trump has said he will take the case to the Supreme Court.
His remodel of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has also stumbled after algae returned and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro refuted his claims that a vandal was responsible for the damage.
Meanwhile, Trump is planning extensive renovations of a golf course in East Potomac Park, which could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths. He is also moving forward with a triumphal arch that will sit near Arlington National Cemetery.
Trump has derided the Kennedy Center as “rusted, rotted, and rat and bug infested” and threatened to hand the building over to Congress after Cooper rejected the closure and the addition of the president’s name to the building.
The institution’s leadership has argued that it’s in genuine need of repair and updating.
Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, guided a group of journalists through the building in April, highlighting severe water damage that he said corroded steel in some places as thin as tissue paper. Some pieces of equipment, including several 800-ton chillers that help cool the building, are decades old and in need of replacement.
At the time, Floca said he considered doing the repairs individually but insisted it was his recommendation to Trump to close the building and move forward with the renovation all at once.
“When the president asked: ‘How do you make these projects the best? How do you make them really excellent and deliver them efficiently?’ my recommendation was you close the building and you do everything over a definite period of time, two years,” he said.
More recently, the legal battles became the subject of barbs and jokes as comedian Bill Maher accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in late June. At the start of the program, Pamella Roland DeVos, a Kennedy Center trustee appointed by Trump, described the institution as a “national cultural center open not just for some but for every American patron who wants to experience the greatest art and expression the world has to offer.”
“The responsibility that comes with it is one our board takes very seriously,” she said.