A towering blue mid-kick figure that became a familiar sight along the Potomac began quietly coming down Wednesday morning. The Kennedy Center began dismantling “Blue,” a 2019 outdoor sculpture by Joel Shapiro that the institution once billed as a permanent fixture of its Reach expansion, reports the New York Times. The move, made without prior public notice, comes after internal documents indicated the work had been singled out for removal following President Trump’s shake-up of the center’s leadership and art collection.
The Kennedy Center called the deinstallation routine and said Shapiro’s foundation will decide where the piece goes next, adds the Washington Post. “We are deeply grateful to Joel Shapiro for the years Blue has spent animating our campus and connecting visitors to his vision,” the center said in a statement Wednesday. “We are honored to have been stewards of his vibrant work and a part of his enduring legacy.”
Shapiro’s daughter, Ivy, said her father—who died in 2025—would have been “alarmed,” calling “Blue” one of his key site-specific works. Former Kennedy Center curator Josef Palermo, who has written that he was told Trump’s planned $250 million renovation would bring in new art, argued that the institution owes the public more transparency, saying it holds such works “in trust for the American people.” The removal has energized local critics already protesting what they describe as Trump’s politicization of the arts center, from his disputed effort to put his name on the facade to appointing a new board and naming himself chairman.