A storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this month and its leadership sprang into action. One thing they did not do was repair the damage.<\/p>\n
Instead staff members left the mess on the carpet for nearly two weeks, posting photos on social media with commentary like<\/a> \u201cthe place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it.\u201d They measured plaster shards and mapped the \u201cdebris field\u201d like investigators after a plane crash, for a 55-page briefing for the center\u2019s board about the building\u2019s decay. No one was injured but Mr. Trump claimed online that a security guard had narrowly avoided \u201ccertain death.\u201d<\/a> Less than two hours later, his allies on the board voted to close the center, citing safety concerns.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s threats this past week suggest that saving face, not lives, better explains why he shuttered the Kennedy Center on Tuesday for what officials said would be a temporary closure<\/a>.<\/p>\n The president, who is the center\u2019s chairman, first announced in February that it would close for two years of renovations<\/a>. Democratic lawmakers on the board said it was an excuse to avoid the humiliation of plummeting ticket sales and fleeing artists. Since then Mr. Trump has fought to add his name to the memorial<\/a> to a slain president, drawing multiple court injunctions. When a judge denied him again last week, the president made his priority clear. He decreed that the closing would take place immediately but that the renovation would not begin until courts \u2014 potentially the Supreme Court \u2014 allow his name on the building front.<\/p>\n Then, as heavy construction fencing went up around the building, he went further. \u201cThe Trump administration should certainly have recognition,\u201d he said, arguing that his name on the center would help lift it out of physical and financial turmoil. \u201cBecause frankly if we don\u2019t do that it\u2019s going to close, it\u2019ll end up being ripped down.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday night, a large crowd of demonstrators locked arms<\/a> to form a human chain around the building in protest of Mr. Trump\u2019s efforts to close the center amid fears that he might ultimately bulldoze it.<\/p>\n The closure is the apotheosis of the wreckage and chaos created in the less than two years since Mr. Trump\u2019s takeover of the center, once a bipartisan global model of public access to the arts. Internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times demonstrate the political capture of the institution by the whims of Mr. Trump, who at the start of his second term installed a board that made him chairman<\/a>. Audiences and donors fled, and its finances cratered.<\/p>\n The center\u2019s first Trump-appointed director, Richard Grenell, pursued a plan, not previously reported, to replace works in the center\u2019s art collection, including gifts from foreign nations honoring Kennedy, with art selected by Trump patrons. \u201cYou can definitely start sending stuff back to the countries who donated it now,\u201d Mr. Grenell said in an email to Josef Palermo, a curator he hired. \u201cFigure out everything you don\u2019t want and just send it back A.S.A.P.\u201d<\/p>\n Conservative groups and friends of the president staged events for free or at steep discounts,<\/a> including a conference on \u201cending Christian persecution.\u201d The center threw parties and dedicated rooms to Trump donors and political allies.<\/p>\n Workers renovated Mr. Trump\u2019s three theater boxes in the center<\/a>, installing gold plumbing fixtures and tearing up newly laid tile whose color was not to the liking of the White House. In one email, a Kennedy Center staff member, Lisa Dale, alerted colleagues to Mr. Trump\u2019s demand for a certain type of tree on campus: \u201cOur Chairman loves maple trees and is insisting we plant maple trees from a very specific Grove by a very specific gardener. \ud83d\ude42 I actually love this about him!\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump and center officials blame past leadership for the maintenance and financial problems. Despite recent removals of art from the campus and from public display, they say there is no active plan to dump the collection.<\/p>\n \u201cOur nonpartisan approach is evident by the consistent practice of welcoming everyone and continued invitations to bipartisan members of Congress and their staff for briefings, tours and our programming,\u201d a spokeswoman, Roma Daravi<\/a>, said in a statement on Friday. (Hours later she lost her job in a round of layoffs, one of several this year.) On Wednesday she told Real America\u2019s Voice, a pro-Trump television network, that Democratic critics \u201care knowingly stopping any work that is going to save this institution because they don\u2019t want President Trump to get the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats scoffed. \u201cIt is bonkers,\u201d Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Kennedy Center building, said in an interview. \u201cThe No. 1 problem the Kennedy Center has had is President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Five Bipartisan Decades<\/p>\n It was first known as the National Cultural Center, conceived in the 1950s by a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and then championed by Kennedy, a Democrat, as an artistic oasis for all. The two presidents built public support and raised money for the center, and their wives were honorary co-chairs of its board.<\/p>\n After Kennedy\u2019s assassination in 1963, Congress passed a law that named the center for him and required it to operate as a living memorial. The governing framework that developed aimed to insulate the institution from partisanship. The building would be maintained with federal money, and its arts programming paid for by private donors and ticket sales. Board members included legislators from both parties and presidential appointees whose six-year terms overlapped administrations.<\/p>\n For five decades, legislators of both parties attended events like the Kennedy Center Honors, the center\u2019s biggest night of the year. The Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia sat together at the opera. A benefit concert after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks included tributes from Laura Bush, the first lady at the time, and Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had a whole bunch of Republicans and you had a whole bunch of Democrats and everyone was just trying to make art and arts education,\u201d said Michael Kaiser, who ran the center from 2001 to 2014.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump, snubbed by many in the liberal-leaning arts world, was a no-show at center events for most of his first term. But less than a month into his second term, he purged the Kennedy Center board of Biden-era appointees and installed allies. They made him chairman, the first time a sitting president has served in that role.<\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019re Returning the Art\u2019<\/p>\n Mr. Trump brought on Mr. Grenell<\/a>, his pugilistic former ambassador to Germany, who stocked the center\u2019s upper ranks with partisans. Internal emails and documents \u2014 including some from the office of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on a Senate committee overseeing the center \u2014 show that politics shaped Mr. Grenell\u2019s effort to replace the center\u2019s art collection.<\/p>\n A proposal circulated by Kennedy Center officials late last year made it clear on its first page that \u201cde-accession\u201d of artwork \u201cmay include disposal via the following means: return to country of origin, transfer or exchange with another institution, public sale or destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Grenell left the center in March<\/a>, and Mr. Palermo, the curator, was laid off the same month. In an Atlantic article<\/a> published in April, Mr. Palermo described himself as opposed to the plan to purge the art collection. But the documents portray him as an eager participant who crafted a plan to recruit Trump-friendly philanthropists to a new \u201cCollectors Council.\u201d<\/p>\n A memo about the proposed council described some of its functions as de-accessioning \u201coutdated or inappropriate artworks,\u201d and replacing them with works that reflect \u201cshared American values.\u201d Donors would pay up to $100,000 to join.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my job to take orders and try to implement them,\u201d Mr. Palermo said in an interview. He added that Mr. Grenell told him that \u201cthe president wants all new art\u201d for the center.<\/p>\n In an interview, Mr. Grenell said he did not discuss art with the president. \u201cWhat I instructed Josef to do was go back to every gifted piece of art and tell the giver, \u2018Thank you very much, we\u2019re returning the art,\u2019\u201d he said. In a subsequent interview, Mr. Grenell said he was particularly focused on returning art in need of repair or restoration, which he said the Kennedy Center could not afford.<\/p>\n The plan described in the documents targeted more than 20 artworks inside and outside the building, including \u201cBlue,\u201d a towering outdoor sculpture given to the center by its artist, Joel Shapiro, that this month was hauled away without public notice or explanation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Inside the center, the removal plan targeted 15 artworks in the African Lounge<\/a>, an events space near the Opera House that opened in 1977 and was closed and locked some time after Mr. Trump took over. The lounge\u2019s textiles, artwork and a carved wood sculpture from Ghana representing Africans\u2019 grief over Kennedy\u2019s death were removed without public explanation.<\/p>\n In response to questions about the art removal plan, the center said that the works remained \u201cfully safeguarded with no planned or imminent changes\u201d and that the collection \u201chas been comprehensively cataloged.\u201d It said the African Lounge works are being preserved within the center and declined requests to see the art.<\/p>\n Staff members and former Kennedy Center officials speculated that \u201cBlue\u201d was removed because Mr. Trump, who has said he considers much of modern art \u201ca con,\u201d did not like it. But a White House official said Mr. Trump was unaware of the plan to remove \u201cBlue.\u201d The center declined to comment. The sculpture has since been sold to the philanthropist David Rubenstein<\/a>, the former Kennedy Center chairman ousted by Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n This summer a series of unsigned, unattributed gold-plated reliefs appeared in the Reach, a newer Kennedy Center annex that is slated to remain open during the main building\u2019s closure. The images depicted include Mr. Trump raising his fist after he survived a 2024 assassination attempt, the billionaire Elon Musk and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n The artist is believed to be Trish Duggan, a major Trump donor. The center declined to comment. Ms. Duggan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n The Name, the Tarps and the End<\/p>\n In July 2025 Mr. Trump secured $257 million from Congress for a Kennedy Center renovation.<\/p>\n In December, the board voted to put Mr. Trump\u2019s name on the building\u2019s front<\/a>. More performers and patrons fled.<\/p>\n Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio and an ex officio member of the center\u2019s board, sued over the name change.<\/p>\n In March Mr. Trump replaced Mr. Grenell with Matt Floca, a facilities manager with no arts programming experience, whom the president had been calling weekly for updates on everything from new boilers to theater seat armrests that he wanted to be marble.<\/p>\n Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that only Congress could change the name of the center and ordered Mr. Trump\u2019s name removed<\/a>. Late at night in mid-June, journalists and a festival-like crowd gathered to watch.<\/p>\n Mr. Floca was worried that the public spectacle would enrage Mr. Trump, according to three people familiar with recent Kennedy Center events who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. Mr. Floca had workers cover a tower of scaffolding with tarps, blocking the crowd\u2019s view as they pulled the letters off the wall<\/a>. Mr. Trump\u2019s name is gone, but the tarps remain. Center officials have said they are there for maintenance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Barred by Judge Cooper from shutting down the building entirely, the center began closing off entire sections, citing safety concerns. Its sweeping Potomac terrace has been off-limits since midsummer. The fallen ceiling plaster led to the closure of the entire Grand Foyer, a space nearly two football fields long.<\/p>\n The damage has made a cameo appearance in a White House video<\/a>, with voice-over by Mr. Floca, justifying the closure. Late last week employees in hard hats finally vacuumed up the debris from the carpet.<\/p>\n Kitty Bennett contributed research.<\/p>\n