Kennedy Center board votes to partially close arts center during renovations and add Trump’s name to the building again

The Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board voted Thursday to partially close the iconic arts center for up to two years during renovations and to re-add President Donald Trump’s name to the building’s facade, according to a person who attended the virtual board meeting and a second person familiar with the meeting.

The decision would close the Kennedy Center’s main building and keep a smaller addition, known as the Reach, open for some events in response to a May court order requiring the board to maintain the center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy.

After an almost two-hour Zoom meeting, the board voted 20-3 to change the name of the building to “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” and the physical location to “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proposed the name change.

Trump, who appointed himself chairman of the board last year, joined the call for several minutes, according to the source who attended the meeting.

The three people voting against it are the ex officio members from Congress, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; and Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash.

“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed,” Beatty, who was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Kennedy Center’s renaming , said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”

Attorneys for Beatty said in a statement that the new naming effort appears to defy a judge’s ruling this year that the center’s board does not have the authority to rename what was intended as a “living memorial” for an assassinated president.

“A federal judge already rejected the board’s unlawful attempt to rename the Kennedy Center, and told Donald Trump’s handpicked board that its last closure vote was ill-informed and preordained. Today’s vote is more of the same, and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts,” said the lawyers, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order in May, which temporarily blocked the Kennedy Center’s planned closure last month, also asked that the board provide a financial plan to justify the decision to close it. Keeping the smaller venue open would allow ticket sales for some events, including performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, which is the Kennedy Center’s chief tenant.

The orchestra has performed there since the early 1970s, when the center — conceived by Jaqueline Kennedy as a memorial to her slain husband — opened.

In recent years, under the baton of music director and principal conductor Giancarlo Noseda, it has been rising in stature — but its future is now uncertain because the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall will not be available.