WASHINGTON — A section of the ceiling in the Kennedy Center’s Grand Foyer gave way Friday evening during storms, and the center’s leadership said the collapse showed the building must close for a two-year renovation that a federal judge has blocked.
No one was injured. Debris and dust fell onto the foyer’s red carpet at about 5 p.m., according to the center, which released photographs of the damage.
The main building closed Friday evening and reopened Saturday. The Grand Foyer, which connects the three main theaters, remains closed while crews assess the damage.
Congress created the center as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy. A federal judge is weighing whether the board President Donald Trump appointed can close it and has not ruled yet. The board has told the court it may begin adding Trump’s name to the front of the building Tuesday.
Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president for public relations, said the failure stems from “decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership” and called it another example of the urgent need to close for renovation.
The center has not released an engineering assessment identifying a cause. The collapse followed two days of heavy rain.
Trump chairs the board. He removed most of its members in February 2025, and the new trustees elected him chairman, the first sitting president to hold the job. That board voted 20-3 on Aug. 13 to close the main building for up to two years.
It was the second such vote. In May, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper threw out an earlier one as “ill-informed and seemingly preordained,” halted the shutdown weeks before it was set to begin, and ordered Trump’s name removed from the facade.
Cooper said the board could still close the center if it reconsidered properly. He has not ruled on the August vote, and his order blocking the closure remains in effect. The building has remained open under that order.
The center has staged little since July, mostly small shows at the REACH next door. The National Symphony Orchestra will spread its coming season across six other venues.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, is suing to stop the closure and the renaming. She sits on the board because of the office she holds, not by Trump’s appointment, and under bylaws the board revised last year, members designated by Congress cannot vote, The Washington Post reported.
Beatty was photographed in the Grand Foyer on Sept. 2, feet from where the ceiling later fell.
A coalition of preservation groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, sued separately in March over skipped federal reviews. That suit does not dispute that the building needs repairs.
Congress set aside $257 million for Kennedy Center repairs last year, about six times its usual federal support. Cooper’s order allows repair work to go forward.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., released a whistleblower complaint in July from former center project managers alleging rushed cosmetic work before televised events featuring Trump, including steel columns painted over rust and a new bathroom floor torn out over the tile color.
The center says those allegations get key facts wrong and that its work addressed years of deferred maintenance.
In a court filing last month, the center said scaffolding was still up out front so crews could repair the underside of the roof overhang and test it for water leaks. That work is at the entrance, not the Grand Foyer.
A tarp has covered the facade since June, when crews took down the letters spelling Trump’s name. The board’s new inscription, reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” could go up Tuesday.
