President Donald Trump’s surprise Sunday announcement that he planned to close the Kennedy Center for two years sent shock waves through the center, Washington and the broader arts world.
“I’m not ripping it down. I’ll be using the steel,” said Trump in a news conference Monday, when asked whether he would demolish the building. “So we’re using the structure, we’re using some of the marble and some of the marble comes down, but when it’s open, it’ll be brand new and really beautiful.” He said the project would cost about $200 million.
The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs.
He posted at 6:21 p.m. Eastern. The center’s staff received no official communication until more than an hour later, when President Richard Grenell sent a copy of the Truth Social post to all employees, along with this brief note: “We recognize this creates many questions as plan to temporarily close most of our operations. We will have more information about staffing and operational changes in the coming days.”
Five people familiar with the board of trustees’ activities, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said at least some board members were blindsided by Trump’s announcement.
One of the people was not aware of any upcoming meetings to consider the plan. If a vote does take place, it could follow the example of the unanimous vote to add Trump’s name to the center, which came months after changes to the Kennedy Center’s bylaws ensured only presidentially appointed board members could vote. (The center said that change followed long-standing practice.)
Within hours, speculation and fear had spread as the center’s staffers, performing artists and patrons began preparing for an uncertain future. The Kennedy Center had already booked a slate of performances after July 4, including shows of touring productions “The Outsiders,” “Back to the Future: The Musical” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Listings remained online Monday afternoon. The National Symphony Orchestra, meanwhile, has performed a full season of subscription concerts at the venue since 1971.
Questions abounded: Who knew this was happening? What would happen to shows that have already been scheduled? Who could lose their jobs? Will the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize continue? How do the center’s many unions come into play? What, exactly, is the construction project?
One of the few things that became clear on Monday afternoon is that the center plans to continue funding the National Symphony Orchestra, and has agreed to find it alternative places to perform, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
In the message to NSO board members, musicians and staff, the orchestra’s chair Joan Bialek and executive director Jean Davidson said the center “has confirmed to us that the National Symphony Orchestra will continue to receive all of its funding under its affiliation agreement and that they will work with us to find alternative performance venues for the next two seasons.”
Little else, however, is yet clear. The Kennedy Center did not respond to questions from The Post.
“The building is not falling apart or condemnable, there’s no reason ‘repairs’ couldn’t be done while still keeping portions of it open for performances,” said one staffer, who like others for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for retribution. “A two-year shutdown under the guise of ‘renovations’ raises serious questions about motives and whether these decisions are being made in good faith.”
“The Kennedy Center is not closing because of any structural necessity,” said another staffer. “The situation is far simpler: This is a self-inflicted crisis created by Trump and Ric Grenell, for which they bear full responsibility.”
Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, representing groups that have sued the Kennedy Center on behalf of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), said in a statement that Trump’s announcement “raises serious questions about whether his purpose isn’t to renovate but to shut the Center down to avoid further embarrassment” of artist and patron boycotts. They would consider “all legal remedies” to address the closure, they said.
The announcement leaves the programming calendar in doubt.
Deborah Borda, former president and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic, put it bluntly: There’s no silver lining for the NSO.
“To have to deal with something in a crisis mode and not be able to be strategic and timely in how you work on it is never good,” said Borda. “They weren’t selling many tickets anyway but will their subscribers move with them? Subscriptions are seen as your heart of sales. They’ve got a real task ahead of them.”
Meanwhile, three Broadway tours have stops planned at the center after the proposed closure. As of Monday morning, tickets were still on sale for “Back to the Future,” which is scheduled to begin July 7, followed by “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Outsiders,” for which tickets are listed as available with a subscription purchase. Representatives for the productions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Route planning for Broadway tours begins up to two years in advance, a process that producers and booking agents described to The Post as a logistical tangle.
“It is almost impossible to try to reroute once your route is decided,” one Broadway producer told The Post in an interview last year, adding that significant changes could entail financial losses that cause a tour to close altogether.
The most obvious alternative venue in D.C., the National Theatre, is already booked in July and August with other Broadway tours, “Beetlejuice” and “The Notebook.” (A representative for the National declined to comment on any effects the theater has felt from upheaval at the center.)
Such upheaval is unusual. “Once a show is on sale and there’s tickets in people’s hands, it would be very rare for that agreement not to be honored,” in part because most venues don’t want to damage their relationships with the public, noted another industry insider in an interview last year. Contracts between Broadway tours and regional venues are often not signed until close to the engagement, so the productions may or may not have legal recourse against the center.
A union official representing musicians in the NSO and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra said that they had no forewarning of the closure and that the situation feels “catastrophic.”
“Orchestras are not like buildings. You can’t simply close them down for two years and expect that you can open them up again. They’re living organisms in a way,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the organization, D.C. Federation of Musicians AFM Local 161-710.
Even if the closure “didn’t actually come to pass,” the official added, “I think a lot of musicians in the orchestras might be saying, ‘I think I need a different strategy. This is not a long-term solution for my career. I need to go elsewhere.’”
The Opera House Orchestra’s contract with the Kennedy Center, which lasts until August 2027, includes work guarantees for a certain number of hours of ballet work every year, the official said. But the orchestra has already been running without a management structure at the Kennedy Center and the official was not confident that the institution would be able to handle the logistics of moving performances to new venues.
The official said they were concerned about payments for upcoming work for American Ballet Theatre, which will be performing at the Kennedy Center starting Feb. 11. The orchestra’s first rehearsal is this weekend, but the official didn’t know whether musicians might “arrive to a room that’s empty with no chairs and stands.”
Grenell lauded Trump’s decision on X, calling his leadership “visionary.” He pointed to Congress’s historically large appropriation of $257 million in the One Big Beautiful Bill for maintenance of the building.
“It desperately needs this renovation and temporarily closing the Center just makes sense,” Grenell wrote in the post. Previously, Trump and his leadership have cited, without evidence, that the center has broken elevators, was infested with rats and that the concrete in the parking garage was crumbling.
Democratic lawmakers charged with oversight of the center have heavily criticized the proposed closure.
“As President Trump continues his demolition tour of Washington, he’s now setting his sights on one of America’s great cultural institutions,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who serves on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. “… If he succeeds, it will be because of a series of suspect and illegal actions to commandeer the Kennedy Center as a clubhouse for his friends and political allies and install leadership who will satisfy his every whim.”
Beatty, who is also an ex officio Kennedy Center board member, raised concerns about the future of employees’ and artists’ contracts. (Senate Democrats are investigating the Kennedy Center, accusing Grenell of “self-dealing, favoritism, and waste,” which he has denied.)
Rumors that Trump would shut down the Kennedy Center have circulated since late fall of last year, with many current and former employees suggesting it would be a tourniquet to stop the press coverage of declining ticket sales and artists boycotts.
But the actual announcement came as a shock. Kevin Couch, the center’s senior vice president of artistic programming who resigned last week, less than two weeks after his hire was announced, was blindsided.
“I resigned without knowledge of any plans to close the Kennedy Center and hope the institution uses this moment to refocus on its mission and support of artists,” Couch said.
Or, said Couch, as a friend of his put it via text: “‘Dude it’s like you got the last helicopter out of ‘Nam.’”
The post ‘Crisis’: The fallout from Trump’s surprise plan to close Kennedy Center appeared first on Washington Post.
