WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) – The board of Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is due to vote on Tuesday on whether it will continue to operate, with directors largely installed by President Donald Trump arguing that its future hinges on having his name on the complex.
Trump’s name has been added to and then removed from one of the nation’s top performing arts venues once already this year after federal judges ruled that only Congress could legally change the name of what it designated to be a “living memorial” to Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, who was assassinated in 1963.
The effort is part of Trump’s broader vision of leaving his cultural and aesthetic mark on the U.S. capital, including a large new ballroom to replace the White House East Wing he ordered demolished, a troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and a planned “triumphal arch” near the nation’s main cemetery honoring its war dead.
BOARD SAYS TRUMP NAME VITAL
Rather than renaming the Kennedy Center itself, the board, made up of Trump appointees with Trump himself as president, will focus on adding Trump’s name on the exterior marble “below the name of the center” to credit him for planned renovations, according to resolutions filed in court on Monday.
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the draft resolution says.
The draft resolution says the center’s finances are dire, and it will be unable to honor its payroll obligations or routine maintenance contracts “within a matter of weeks.”
After Trump began exerting more direct control over the Kennedy Center last year, artists canceled performances in protest, the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra have been forced to find other venues, and revenue has cratered.
In a second resolution, the board will vote on immediately closing the center for an estimated two years of renovations to the main building, which the board says has crumbling ceilings from water damage.
Tuesday’s meeting is set to cement an earlier vote on August 13, where the board approved the addition of an inscription honoring Trump, who found fame as a New York real estate developer, and renaming the site where the center sits to the President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
DEMOCRAT SUED TO STOP RENAMING
Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board due to her position in Congress, has successfully sued to stop the center being renamed after Trump. She shared the board’s draft resolutions with the court on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his May ruling: “The Kennedy Center’s organic 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.”
Workers stripped Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center in June and left the center’s exterior masked by scaffolding and a white tarpaulin.
The board’s draft resolution, which includes 10 different options for how the Trump inscription could be rendered, says that its plans are consistent with Cooper’s order.
Beatty has asked Judge Cooper to find the inscription plans in violation of his May ruling. A scheduling hearing is set to take place in her lawsuit hours before the board meetings in the afternoon.
The inscription options being weighed by the board include: “A Legacy protected through the Generosity of President Donald J. Trump” and “Renovation, Restoration, and support by President Donald J. Trump.”
(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Mike Scarcella in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis)
Comments