President Trump’s name was affixed to the front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday morning, transforming what was constructed as a living memorial to the slain 35th president into another Trump-branded property in the capital.
The face of the building now reads: “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND THE JOHN F. KENNEDY MEMORIAL CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.”
Even though Mr. Trump has spent his entire adult life slapping his name on objects big and small — skyscrapers, water bottles, casinos, steaks, board games, vodka, bibles, sneakers, trading cards, ties, magazines, an airplane and a university — this was different.
This was a national monument to another president, one who was shot dead at 46 years old. And now it’s about Mr. Trump.
The speed with which this name change happened took many in Washington by surprise. It was only the day before that the Kennedy Center’s board — a group of people mostly handpicked by Mr. Trump — voted to change the name. There were immediate questions about legality. The performing arts center is, by law, designated the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and it has been generally understood that the power to change the name lies with Congress.
The president said on Thursday that he was “surprised” and “honored” that the board had decided to do this for him. And yet, there were those letters spelling out his name, all ready to go the very next morning.
Roma Daravi, the top spokeswoman for the center, did not answer questions about the timing of the name change or how long it had been in the works.
Several prominent members of the Kennedy family reacted with outrage.
Kerry Kennedy, whose father was Senator Robert F. Kennedy, posted on X: “Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
Her brother Christopher Kennedy said in an email: “There is a difference between insult and injury. This is an insult. It is a distraction from the injury Trump is doing to the poor with cuts to snap, health care and special education. If we are going to fight this administration we will fight for the poor and not just ourselves.”
As with all big families, not everyone felt the same way.
“I am personally not that offended,” said Douglas Kennedy, another son of Robert F. Kennedy.
“I don’t find memorials and names on memorials as moving or as important as some,” he added. “In fact, I think it can be detrimental. People’s works and how they live their lives speak far louder than names on buildings. I also think there are a lot more important things going on in our country right now than this issue.”
Their brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump-appointed health secretary, did not respond to a text message seeking comment about the name change.
Mr. Trump’s supporters who work at the center and sit on the board said in interviews that they felt he had a right to have his name on it after extending so much political capital to secure $250 million in funding for a building that had long been falling apart.
“When something is well deserved, why not?” asked Andrea Wynn, a Trump-appointed board member who hosted the board meeting at which the name change was decided, at her house in Palm Beach.
Others saw it differently.
“What arrogance. What narcissism,” Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, wrote on X. “I will be introducing legislation prohibiting the naming of federal buildings after sitting presidents.”
The U.S. Institute of Peace on the National Mall already has Mr. Trump’s name on the building. A bit farther along the Mall, a massive banner of Mr. Trump’s face fluttered from the front of the Agriculture Department. There have been rumblings from Republican lawmakers about renaming Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia for Mr. Trump. And there’s the gargantuan ballroom being built at the White House, which Mr. Trump says he isn’t going to name after himself, though who can be sure?
When he visited Mount Vernon in 2018, Mr. Trump seemed unable to understand why George Washington hadn’t named the estate after himself. “If he was smart, he would have put his name on it,” Mr. Trump was reported to have said. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”
But there was something especially striking about seeing his name affixed to the Kennedy Center on Friday morning. It wasn’t built for people to remember Mr. Trump. It was built for people to remember Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Trump, the lifelong branding obsessive, now has his name stacked over the Kennedy name, which was the biggest brand in American politics for the American century. This was an act of brand domination.
The dark irony of the Kennedy Center is that it most likely would not have been built had Kennedy not been killed.
The idea for what was originally to be called the “National Cultural Center” predated the Kennedy presidency by a few years. It was a Cold War conceit, the idea being that a grand cultural acropolis ought to exist in the American capital at a time when Russia was competing against the United States in every measure.
President Kennedy supported the idea, and helped raise money for it, but there wasn’t much of an appetite among lawmakers in Washington to fund it. At the time of his death, only $13 million had been raised. Shortly after he was killed, the center’s board repitched it as a living memorial to the young president. Congress got involved. It opened on Sept. 8, 1971. The final cost was about $70 million.
President Richard M. Nixon didn’t attend opening night because he felt it was an evening for the Kennedy family; he offered his presidential box to “Mrs. Aristotle Onassis,” as Jacqueline Kennedy was referred to in the newspapers by that point. She ended up not going — “personal reasons” were cited — but the other opera boxes were filled on opening night with various Kennedy siblings, cousins and widows. Leonard Bernstein conducted a piece called “The Mass.”
The centerpiece of the marble temple is a bust of President Kennedy, eight feet tall and 3,000 pounds, that rests in the center of the building’s grand foyer.
After the Trump takeover commenced this year, many longtime employees in the building became convinced that the bust would be removed — possibly even replaced with a golden Trump head. But several Trump-aligned Kennedy Center executives said in interviews with The New York Times this fall that this would never happen.
Richard Grenell, the center’s Trump-appointed president, and his deputy, Ms. Daravi, spent the day arguing with people online, insisting that they were not desecrating a memorial to an assassinated president in order to please a living one.
“The memorial isn’t impacted,” Mr. Grenell posted several times.
“Those individuals attacking now, sat idly by while America’s cultural center slowly crumbled,” Ms. Daravi wrote. “Now the bipartisan Trump Kennedy Center is here for generations to come.”
Some Trump supporters who work in the building were amused by the trollishness of it all, but also conceded it was only going to make their jobs harder. Theatergoers had already been boycotting the center in large numbers as the place became ever more politicized this year.
And that was before the name Donald J. Trump was put on the front of the building.
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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