WASHINGTON — The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted Tuesday to close the main building immediately for a two-year renovation, hours after a federal judge blocked the board from returning President Donald Trump’s name to the arts complex.
The building closed to the public Tuesday afternoon, The Washington Post reported. The vote ends, for now, a months-long fight between Trump’s handpicked board and the federal courts over who controls the national memorial to the 35th president — and it leaves the center’s stages dark while the renovation’s financing remains unsettled.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled Tuesday morning that the board could not add a Trump tribute to the building or grounds in any form. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper said in the ruling, which ABC News reported called the board’s arguments “linguistic gymnastics,” Cooper noted Congress has already appropriated $257 million for the renovation.
The board voted in August to inscribe the facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” and to rename the plaza for Trump. In a proposal circulated before Tuesday’s meeting, the board said that without that recognition, Trump was unlikely to raise money for the work, and warned the center could not meet payroll or maintenance contracts “within a matter of weeks.”
The board also cited safety. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a board member, posted security-camera video of a section of Grand Foyer ceiling plaster falling during a Sept. 4 storm.
“The plaster dropped from 60 feet!” Lutnick said in a follow-up post. “The plaster was 5 feet by 4 feet, weighing more than 150lbs!” No one was hurt.
Trump joined the board meeting virtually and spent several minutes attacking Cooper and U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who brought the renaming lawsuit, a source told NBC News.
On Truth Social after the vote, Trump said the closing takes effect immediately but that the reconstruction “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name.”
Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., one of the ex officio trustees who has opposed the closure, called the administration’s position “a transparent blackmail attempt and bogus claims of impending bankruptcy” in a statement Tuesday.
The dispute has already reached the Lehigh Valley. Philadelphia band Low Cut Connie, whose frontman Adam Weiner canceled a Kennedy Center date after Trump took over as chairman, headlined Allentown’s free summer concert series at Union Terrace Amphitheater in May.
