RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Donald Trump just won’t let go of his plans for the Kennedy Center.
Less than three months after a federal judge ordered the president’s name stripped from the national arts center, Trump’s handpicked trustees have found a new way to try to put him back on the building. During a board meeting today, they voted in favor of a resolution that would return the president’s name to the building’s facade. It would read:
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts
Restored and Renovated by President Donald Trump
I obtained a copy of the resolution, which contains one more edit to the Kennedy Center’s marble edifice. Once an obscure endowment known as the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reaches $100 million in donations, the resolution would expand the proposed signage’s language to include a third line: Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund . The vote, which was not included on the agenda distributed before the meeting, will likely drag out a legal fight over Trump’s transformation of the center and deepen an institutional crisis that has repelled audiences, artists, and donors since his takeover. Participants voted 20–3 to adopt the resolution, one person familiar with today’s proceedings told me on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. The three “no” votes were from ex officio members of the board, who are not appointed by Trump but serve by dint of their federal office. Most members of the board are general trustees appointed by Trump. (The board elected Trump chair in February 2025.)
There is also still the matter of the center’s renovation plans. A main item of the meeting was to resolve a problem that has dogged Trump’s plans for the Kennedy Center for months: how to make a convincing case that the center needs to close. A federal judge had previously ruled that the board had failed to sufficiently examine the consequences of a full shutdown when it signed off in March on Trump’s surprise plan to close down the center for two years for a glow-up. Critics, including some ex officio trustees, accuse Trump of using the renovation as a cover for the center’s operational failings under his leadership. This time, board members reviewed a new trove of materials before—once again—voting for a full closure.
I obtained the report, assembled by a consulting firm and a construction-management firm, which presented two scenarios. The two-year-closure plan favored by Trump, which would displace ensembles such as the National Symphony Orchestra until the center reopened, would be covered largely by the $257 million appropriation from Congress that Trump asked for last year. A $560 million plan would extend the renovation to four years but allow programming to continue inside the center. Arts administrators generally try to avoid full shutdowns of major arts venues for fear of breaking audiences’ attendance habits. The uncertainty has deepened a crisis faced by the orchestra, which has been unable to announce its next season.
Paolo Zampolli, a general trustee who also serves as the Trump administration’s special envoy for global partnerships, says he strongly supports the plans to close. “It doesn’t make sense to keep it open,” he told me in a phone call after the meeting. “It’s going to take the double of time and cost the double of money.”
At one point, Trump joined the meeting virtually, delivering a tirade of “epic proportions” about the center’s disarray, the person familiar with the proceedings told me. Kennedy Center leaders under Trump have long claimed that the building is falling apart and that the president helped turn around the institution. Today’s naming resolution honored his “existential and unprecedented contributions” to the center.
“It’s very normal that when people do good things, there’s going to be some kind of recognition,” Zampolli told me, adding that he would support Trump’s name being included “everywhere that it could be possible” at the center. Zampolli, a longtime friend of Trump’s, also said he planned to use his own international business relationships to solicit donations for the institution. “That’s why we’re there,” he said of the general trustees. “That’s why the president chooses us and has confidence in us.”
In a statement, one of the ex officio trustees, Representative Rick Larsen of Washington State, criticized the name resolution. “The courts have already determined that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the memorial to the late President and that the current president’s name cannot be used in the public spaces of the memorial,” he said. “If and when the renovations are done, let’s talk about an appropriate recognition. Until then, let’s get the necessary renovation work done.”
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to my requests for comment, and it has yet to communicate with staff about its renewed plan to close the building, according to two staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. One of them said employees had suspected leadership would try to proceed with a shutdown, but news of the name resolution was not expected. “The inscription on the wall is them testing the limits,” the person said. The proposal, as well as the renovation plan, could face pushback from the federal judge assigned to the lawsuit over the center’s future, which was filed earlier this year by Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, one of the ex officio trustees.
[ Read: The Kennedy Center’s latest defense raises a new mystery ]
The name resolution will likely renew speculation about why a tarp is still draping the Kennedy Center’s facade. The covering, fastened tightly to a towering system of scaffolding, has obscured John F. Kennedy’s name since June, when leaders say they complied with U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order to remove Trump’s name from the building. So far, they have not provided a compelling reason for why the tarp is still up.
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