The Kennedy Center Voted to Close Itself for Two Years, Hours After a Judge Said Trump's Name Cannot Go on the Building

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the white marble box on the Potomac that Edward Durell Stone finished in 1971 as the capital's living memorial to the murdered president, will close. Its board, every member of it appointed by Donald Trump, who had himself elected chairman last year, voted on Tuesday to shut the building immediately for two years of renovation, citing what it called "certain fiscal collapse within weeks" and a partial collapse of the ceiling in the Grand Foyer. It was the third such vote since February. NBC News and NPR report that the chief financial officer, Donna Kauranen, resigned the same day after about eighteen months in the post.

The ruling that preceded it

Hours earlier, Judge Christopher Cooper of the federal district court in Washington had rejected the board's latest attempt to put the president's name on the facade and to rename the grounds "President Donald J. Trump Plaza". "Simply put," he wrote, "Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump without Congress's blessing." The Center was created by statute as a memorial to Kennedy; only Congress can alter that. Cooper also observed that the institution's financial decline had coincided with the renaming effort: artists cancelled, subscribers left, and the Washington National Opera ended a residency of fifty years. The Justice Department has appealed to the D.C. Circuit. Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a Democrat, has challenged the closure in court three times.

The president's condition

Trump's response, on his social network, tied the building's future to his name. "The closing will take place immediately, however, the Renovation and Reconstruction cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board's approved name. If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place." Congress appropriated 250 million dollars for capital improvements last year; Trump says he raised a further seventeen million for the Center's account. The board's own numbers, then, say the building can be repaired. The president's statement says it will not be unless the courts rule his way. The Associated Press's Steven Sloan and Ashraf Khalil carried the board's account of its finances; CNN described the board's call with the president as chaotic.

What closes

The Opera House, the Concert Hall, the Eisenhower Theater, the Terrace Theater, the Millennium Stage's free nightly performances, and the REACH extension that opened in 2019. The National Symphony Orchestra's season, the Washington Ballet's Nutcracker, the Honors broadcast in December: none has been given a new home, and the board did not say what happens to the staff or to ticket holders. The building's condition is not in dispute; it has needed the work for a decade, and the foyer ceiling is real. What is in dispute is whether a memorial can be held hostage to its renaming, and the answer, so far, from a federal judge, is no.

The architecture

Stone's building was never loved by critics. Ada Louise Huxtable called it "gemütlich Speer" in 1971. But its 630-foot foyer, with Robert Berks's eight-foot bronze head of Kennedy under eighteen Orrefors chandeliers given by Sweden, has been the room in which official Washington has gathered for fifty-five years, and its terrace over the river is the best free view in the city. Whether it reopens in 2028 under any name at all now depends on three judges of the D.C. Circuit, and on a Congress that has so far declined to change the statute. Washington has lost theatres before. It has not previously closed one to make a point.