{"id":275880,"date":"2026-06-23T23:49:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/275880\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T23:49:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:49:26","slug":"photos-behind-kennedy-center-tarps-show-no-sign-of-trumps-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/275880\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos Behind Kennedy Center Tarps Show No Sign of Trump\u2019s Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

The removal of President Trump\u2019s name<\/a> from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was ordered by a federal judge, was carried out this month behind a towering matrix of scaffolding and tarps, obscuring the work from curious onlookers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But photos of the building\u2019s marble facade, circulated to the news media by an activist group that has opposed the Trump administration\u2019s takeover of the center, show the public for the first time the blank marble where the president\u2019s name had once been.<\/p>\n

The photos were shared with journalists by Mallory Miller, a former employee of the Kennedy Center who co-founded the group Hands Off the Arts, which started organizing protests around the arts center after the president took over its board as chairman.<\/p>\n

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Late last month, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the center\u2019s board, which is stocked with Mr. Trump\u2019s allies, did not have the legal authority to rename the center<\/a>. He said that power rested with Congress<\/a>, which dedicated the institution as a living memorial to President Kennedy in 1964, not long after his assassination.<\/p>\n

The Kennedy Center is appealing the judge\u2019s decision, arguing that \u201cpeople and companies, who have given, or will be giving, millions of dollars to the center were only willing to do so with the name \u2018Trump\u2019 on the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center filed its notice of appeal<\/a> shortly before a legal deadline to remove Mr. Trump\u2019s name. Both the district court and a federal appeals court rejected initial requests to pause the judge\u2019s decision pending its appeal.<\/p>\n

As the deadline loomed on June 12 and hundreds of onlookers watched, workers covered the scaffolding with white tarps before removing the 18 letters from the marble. A gap in the tarps allowed a New York Times photographer to observe a worker pulling the letter \u201cA\u201d from the wall.<\/p>\n

The following morning, the center\u2019s executive director, Matt Floca, filed a sworn declaration with the court confirming that the name had been removed, though the public was not able to see for itself.<\/p>\n

The obscuring of the facade has drawn complaints from Democratic lawmakers, including Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex officio member of the board whose lawsuit led to the judge\u2019s order<\/a>. In court papers filed in the case, Ms. Beatty\u2019s lawyers argued last week that the tarps were a \u201cbizarre and unnecessary privacy screen\u201d intended to \u201cassuage Defendants\u2019 vanity or massage broken egos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials for the center said last week that the \u201cscaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The removal of President Trump\u2019s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,52492,1452,52491,4671,2538,10056,9,24,63,97917,905,1069,1876,8093],"class_list":["post-275880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-center-for-the-performing-arts","tag-donald-j","tag-john-f","tag-kennedy","tag-music","tag-names","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-organizational","tag-theater","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}