A plan to immediately close the Kennedy Center has been approved. The vote came just after a federal judge blocked another attempt to get Donald Trump’s name added to the facade.
The Trump-backed board of the performing arts venue voted Tuesday to shutter the center, citing necessary renovations and teetering financial prospects, according to NBC News. Trump, the board’s chair, virtually joined the closed-door meeting in which the vote took place; he spent much of his time criticizing trustee Rep. Joyce Beatty, who has challenged the board’s choices in court, and the judge who had issued the ruling on his name.
The board’s choice to close the center’s main building was backed by dire messages about the building’s safety and condition, as well as financial situation. A packet that was distributed to trustees prior to the vote noted that a chunk of the ceiling had fallen after a storm and corrosion was widespread, the Washington Post reported. It also said the venue faced “certain fiscal collapse” and would not be able to pay its bills in just a matter of weeks without the president’s fundraising ability. However, it added that Trump wasn’t going to provide his means of raising funds unless his name went on the building. The board stopped short of voting again to put Trump’s name on the building Tuesday, electing instead to shutdown the center.
Voting took place shortly after federal Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled against an August decision by the board to add “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the building, with Cooper saying the Kennedy Center “cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing… The board resolution [in August] bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted,” (via the New York Times).
The planned closure is the latest development in more than a year of turmoil and financial distress that came in the wake of the president’s coup of the institution and an ill-fated attempt to add his name to the title of the 55-year-old living monument. In August, it was reported that the Kennedy Center had lost roughly $100 million in projected revenue and had a nearly $23 million deficit due to a decline in ticket sales and donations that came after Trump’s allies inscribed his name into the title of the memorial in late 2025. Judge Cooper undid the name change months later, ruling that only Congress can change the center’s title, kicking off a new effort by Trump’s handpicked leaders to get his name onto the building.
Ex-officio board member Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, brought the name challenge to the federal court and has successfully litigated to keep the center open. The new plan to close the center will likely face a similar court battle before Judge Cooper.
The plan may also face Trump, who shortly after the closure vote said in a social media post that renovations won’t take place until the federal circuit court and the Supreme Court rule on a name change, and if the name change isn’t allowed by the courts, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” Trump noted that Justice Department attorneys handling the name-change legal saga will ask for an expedited appeal. He also said that $17 million he raised was put into the Kennedy Center account “to keep it afloat.”
Trump’s opponents see the closure and proposed renovations as a stab by the president at putting his indelible mark on the center, much like he’s done with construction projects at the White House and the reflecting pool of the Washington Monument.
