In the wee hours of Saturday, June 13, workers in the nation’s capital, having erected a scaffold in front of the building that was at that moment labeled “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” reportedly carried out a judge’s orders to remove the name of the current US president. Trump had added his own name to the facade in December, over loud protests and in spite of lawsuits filed to stop him, and in spite of the law, which reserves such powers for Congress.
A crowd of some two hundred people had earlier gathered outside the building, chanting, “Take it down!”, reported the Washington Post. They would get their wish.
But the scaffolding remains in place, as does a tarp that hides the facade from public view, so DC residents and tourists have been frustrated in their desire to see the re-renamed performing arts center. “The center says both will stay up while crews evaluate how to repair the exterior marble and, while they’re at it, the slabs on the underside of the hanging roof,” says the Post.
But at least one visitor speaking to the Post saw the decision to continue blocking the facade as a snub to the people. It is “the last gasp of a sore loser,” in the words of tourist Pamela Iden, who said, “He’s thumbing his nose at the court, he’s thumbing his nose at the people.”
The so-called Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., 2025.
Photo Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty
US District Judge Christopher Cooper had ruled May 29 that Trump could not change the name of the center, as the board voted to do in December. (Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the board’s vote was unanimous; some board members disrupted that.) Nor, ruled the judge, could Trump close the center for renovations, as the president had ordered in February after many artists withdrew from plans to perform at the renamed facility. A group of eight preservationist societies filed a lawsuit to stop the closure in March. The president warned on social media after the May 29 ruling that the center would “soon be closed, probably never to open again.”
A June 4 memo from the Kennedy Center’s attorneys, coming just days after Cooper’s ruling, instructed staff to begin removing Trump’s name from signs, letterheads, and email signatures, and to remove his name from the facade by June 12. (The Saturday morning removal came a few hours late.)
The center’s press office did not answer the Post’s questions about a schedule for the removal of the tarp and scaffolding. The press office did not immediately answer ARTnews’s email requesting updates.
Just days after the president’s name was removed, the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, chaired by Trump and stocked with his allies, voted to establish a new endowment in his name, creating an additional source of private funding to complement its existing endowments and the approximately $257 million in federal funding appropriated for its building renovations.
