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The board of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted Thursday to move forward with President Trump’s plan to close the building for renovations, according to a report from The New York Times.
The vote – held virtually and not open to the public – calls for shuttering the Kennedy Center’s main building while keeping the Reach, a newer addition to the campus, open for limited programming and as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy. The decision now goes before a federal judge who previously found the board had been “derelict” in scrutinizing the plan.
Trump announced in February that the center would close for two years. The board – led by the president and composed largely of his allies – quickly agreed, but Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat of Ohio who holds an ex officio seat on the board, sued over the decision. Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington temporarily blocked the closure in May, ruling the original vote had been “ill-informed and seemingly preordained,” and wrote that trustees have an “obligation to both maintain and operate a premiere arts venue” and a “solemn duty to memorialize a fallen president.”
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, the board received a 163-page plan for a $250 million “renewal” project including structural repairs, new marble floors, $11.8 million in acoustical improvements, $7 million in public restroom renovations, and a plan to temporarily relocate the 3,000-pound bronze bust of Kennedy to another building on campus. Construction management firm JLL targets a reopening in summer of 2028.
The Kennedy Center has until next week to share its plan with Judge Cooper.
