From The New York Times:
A storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this month and its leadership sprang into action. One thing they did not do was repair the damage.
Instead staff members left the mess on the carpet for nearly two weeks, posting photos on social media with commentary like “the place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it.” They measured plaster shards and mapped the “debris field” like investigators after a plane crash, for a 55-page briefing for the center’s board about the building’s decay. No one was injured but Mr. Trump claimed online that a security guard had narrowly avoided “certain death.” Less than two hours later, his allies on the board voted to close the center, citing safety concerns.
Mr. Trump’s threats this past week suggest that saving face, not lives, better explains why he shuttered the Kennedy Center on Tuesday for what officials said would be a temporary closure.
The president, who is the center’s chairman, first announced in February that it would close for two years of renovations. Democratic lawmakers on the board said it was an excuse to avoid the humiliation of plummeting ticket sales and fleeing artists. Since then Mr. Trump has fought to add his name to the memorial to a slain president, drawing multiple court injunctions. When a judge denied him again last week, the president made his priority clear. He decreed that the closing would take place immediately but that the renovation would not begin until courts — potentially the Supreme Court — allow his name on the building front.
Then, as heavy construction fencing went up around the building, he went further. “The Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” he said, arguing that his name on the center would help lift it out of physical and financial turmoil. “Because frankly if we don’t do that it’s going to close, it’ll end up being ripped down.”
On Friday night, a large crowd of demonstrators locked arms to form a human chain around the building in protest of Mr. Trump’s efforts to close the center amid fears that he might ultimately bulldoze it.
From: Richard Grenell
Sent: Monday, Oct. 20, 2025 8:12 a.m.
To: Palermo, Josef; Floca, Matt
Cc: Loughery, Rick; Meade, Nick; Floca, Matt
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL]: Art inside KenCen
You can definitely start sending stuff back to the countries who donated it now. Figure out everything you don’t want and just send it back ASAP.
ric
Conservative groups and friends of the president staged events for free or at steep discounts, including a conference on “ending Christian persecution.” The center threw parties and dedicated rooms to Trump donors and political allies.
Workers renovated Mr. Trump’s three theater boxes in the center, installing gold plumbing fixtures and tearing up newly laid tile whose color was not to the liking of the White House. In one email, a Kennedy Center staff member, Lisa Dale, alerted colleagues to Mr. Trump’s demand for a certain type of tree on campus: “Our Chairman loves maple trees and is insisting we plant maple trees from a very specific Grove by a very specific gardener. :) I actually love this about him!”
Mr. Trump and center officials blame past leadership for the maintenance and financial problems. Despite recent removals of art from the campus and from public display, they say there is no active plan to dump the collection.
“Our nonpartisan approach is evident by the consistent practice of welcoming everyone and continued invitations to bipartisan members of Congress and their staff for briefings, tours and our programming,” a spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, said in a statement on Friday. (Hours later she lost her job in a round of layoffs, one of several this year.) On Wednesday she told Real America’s Voice, a pro-Trump television network, that Democratic critics “are knowingly stopping any work that is going to save this institution because they don’t want President Trump to get the credit.”
Democrats scoffed. “It is bonkers,” Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Kennedy Center building, said in an interview. “The No. 1 problem the Kennedy Center has had is President Trump.”
Five Bipartisan Decades
It was first known as the National Cultural Center, conceived in the 1950s by a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and then championed by Kennedy, a Democrat, as an artistic oasis for all. The two presidents built public support and raised money for the center, and their wives were honorary co-chairs of its board.
After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Congress passed a law that named the center for him and required it to operate as a living memorial. The governing framework that developed aimed to insulate the institution from partisanship. The building would be maintained with federal money, and its arts programming paid for by private donors and ticket sales. Board members included legislators from both parties and presidential appointees whose six-year terms overlapped administrations.
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