Trump's Kennedy Center overhaul has reshaped the venue and put its future in doubt

President Trump was photographed this week on board Air Force One examining a large poster with the words "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" printed above a rendering of a construction site, heightening concerns that his administration wants to raze Washington, D.C.'s iconic performing arts venue if his name is not added to its facade.

"I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition," the president told reporters before he boarded the plane Wednesday in North Carolina. "Because frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down." 

Trump's comments and the photographs that followed are the latest developments in a convoluted saga that started when he dismissed the center's trustees in February 2025 — just days after returning to office — and replaced them with loyalists who elected him chairman. 

Despite several legal setbacks, Trump's handpicked board has been pushing ever since to rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was built as a "living memorial" to the slain 35th president, after the White House's current occupant. 

The day before Trump was photographed with the "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" poster, his appointees voted to close the center's main building for renovations. Does this mean Trump will bulldoze the Kennedy Center if he doesn't get the "recognition" he wants? Here's what we know — and what we don't.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

Where things stand

The Kennedy Center is currently closed. Shortly after 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, employees heard a sudden notice on the P.A. system: "The center is now closed to the public. Please exit the center by way of the Hall of States." In a statement, officials described the closure as a temporary, emergency action designed to protect people from deteriorating conditions inside the building after a five-foot-long section of ceiling plaster fell during a recent storm.

At the same time, the board has also been locked in a months-long court battle over its renaming and renovation efforts. Just hours before the closure, Federal Judge Casey Cooper again blocked the center from inscribing Trump's name on its facade — and the president himself responded on social media, saying that "the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place" unless an appeals court allows his name back on the building. 

"The closing will take place immediately, however, the Renovation and Reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board's approved name," Trump wrote. "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."

Last year, Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House after pledging that construction of his new $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom wouldn’t "interfere with the current building.”

On Thursday, Cooper instructed the center to provide more than 30 days' notice before carrying out any significant changes to its renovation plan, "including but not limited to any 'demolition' of the center's main building."

On Friday, Kerry Kennedy — niece of President Kennedy and daughter of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy — posted on social media that a "Hands Around the Kennedy Center" protest would be taking place at 6:30 p.m. ET. 

"With the future still very much uncertain, now more than ever, the Center needs you to stand up for freedom of expression and against authoritarian overreach into arts and culture institutions," read the event's invitation. 

Trump takeover 

On Feb. 7, 2025, Trump announced on social media that he was taking over the Kennedy Center. "At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN," he wrote. "I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture." 

"We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!" he added. 

Within days, Trump had installed his former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as interim executive director and replaced the bipartisan board with various allies, including Dana Blumberg (wife of billionaire Robert Kraft), Alison Lutnick (wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick), conservative country singer Lee Greenwood, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and second lady Usha Vance.

At the time, Trump said he objected to previous Kennedy Center programming, citing "Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth." He vowed to oversee the performance schedule himself. 

"This marks the first time a president has removed his predecessor's board members at the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chair," the Washington Post reported. 

Alex Brandon/AP

Previously, "political persuasion was never a factor we considered or discussed in artistic programming," Michael Kaiser, the Kennedy Center's president from 2001 to 2014, told the New York Times. "Our Board included 14 members of Congress who were evenly split between the two parties. This balance made it clear to everyone at the center that the only way for us to work was to ignore politics."

In response to Trump's takeover, musician Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming stepped down as the center's artistic advisers; TV producer Shonda Rhimes — formerly treasurer of its board of trustees — left as well. Producers of the musical Hamilton and the play Eureka Day canceled entire planned performance runs. Other artists followed suit. 

"These events have caused a major negative reaction in my musical community to playing at the Kennedy Center," guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams wrote in an email to Grenell.

"I cut the DEI bullshit because we can't afford to pay people for fringe and niche programming that the public won't support," Grenell wrote back. Elsewhere, Grenell said that the center had "spent way too much on programming that doesn't bring in any revenue."

"We have completely reversed the decline of this cherished national institution," Trump claimed in August 2025. "We ended the woke political programming, and we're restoring the Kennedy Center as the premier venue for performing arts anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world."

Yet a Washington Post analysis conducted in October 2025 found that, after Trump's takeover, ticket sales for orchestra, theater and dance performances at the center plummeted to their lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new name? 

In May 2025, the new Kennedy Center board revised its bylaws to exclude the 23 federal and local officials who automatically serve as ex officio members from voting. Going forward, only trustees appointed by Trump would be allowed to vote.

On Dec. 18, 2025 — shortly after Trump became the first president to host the annual Kennedy Center Honors — his appointees voted to rename the venue as The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, or the Trump-Kennedy Center. Then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the vote was unanimous, but Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex officio board member, insisted that she "was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice [her] opposition to this move." 

The same day, a new logo featuring Trump's name appeared on the center's website; within 24 hours, workers had added Trump's name to the building's facade. "I was surprised by it, I was honored by it," the president told reporters when asked about the name change. "We saved the building." 

Justice Department lawyers later said the new signage had already been "prepared and/or purchased prior to the Board's vote the day before." 

In protest, more artists canceled planned performances, including Kristy Lee, Chuck Redd and Philip Glass. The Washington National Opera announced it would leave the center. 

"The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law," former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, RFK's grandson, wrote on social media. "It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says.

In late December, Beatty filed suit against the Kennedy Center trustees who voted to change the name, arguing that they had no legal power to do so.

A few months later, in May 2026, Cooper sided with Beatty and ordered the center to revert to its original name within 14 days. The center's founding statute "makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board's unilateral say-so," Cooper wrote in his opinion. "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it."

By mid-June, Trump's name had been removed from the center's website and facade. But the board also tried to appeal Cooper's ruling, arguing that millions of dollars in donations would have to be returned if the center did not ultimately bear Trump's name, according to its new bylaws. 

These efforts failed, yet Trump's appointees seem undeterred. Last month, they voted to inscribe "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" below the center's name on the building's facade — which led Cooper to again block the board from adding the president's name to the building. 

"Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress's blessing," Cooper wrote. "The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted."

Renovation or demolition… or something else?

In tandem with its renaming efforts, the board has also spent the last seven months pushing to shutter the center for renovations.

Trump started to muse about the project in late 2025. The following February, he announced the center would close on July 4, 2026, for a two-year renovation. "I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World," he wrote on social media.

But in his May ruling, Cooper also issued a temporary order blocking the center from fully closing for two years. Instead, he said the center could "move ahead with renovations to the decades-old building and could later decide to close … after its board more fully considered the impact on its statutory requirement to maintain some programming at all times," according to CNN.

At the time, skeptics questioned whether major renovations were necessary, noting that Trump had previously said the center would remain "fully open during construction, renovation and beautification." 

"Trump's contradictory statements and the absence of an independent board or any notification to Congress make these claims of a building in need of repair unverifiable at best," the Atlantic wrote. "A more plausible reason for the closing is that under Trump, the Kennedy Center can't hold on to staff, artists or audiences." 

According to a Washington Post analysis published in August and based on confidential internal documents, "ticket sales had already dropped in the 10 months following Trump's takeover" — "but both ticket sales and donations plunged after the Trump-led board of trustees voted in December to rename the center after him and put his name on the front of the building." As of June, the center's own officials were projecting a $100 million revenue shortfall for fiscal year 2026, with a 70% decline in earned income, the Post reported. 

In response, Trump and his administration have argued that they inherited a "decrepit" structure in dire need of repairs — repairs that cannot proceed unless the president gets credit for them. 

"An order blocking the Board from appropriately recognizing President Trump will cause donors to flee, financial contributions to dry up and structural rehabilitation to stop," the Department of Justice wrote in an Aug. 29 filing, adding that without Trump's efforts, "the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down" — possibly to be replaced with "a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River."

Such a venue has "been proposed, by some, for many years," the filing said.