A tarp hung over the Kennedy Center‘s facade for almost ten days following the passing of a federal judge’s deadline, like a response that no one wanted to provide. On the evening of June 13, workers had taken Donald Trump’s name off the building’s exterior. However, scaffolding was erected that same day rather than allowing the public to see the bare marble. The tarp arrived next. It remained there.
The Kennedy Center itself was not the source of the images that ultimately revealed what lay beneath. They originated from Hands Off the Arts, an activist organization that Mallory Miller, a former employee of the Kennedy Center who worked in the department of artistic programming, co-founded. The photos were surreptitiously obtained by Miller’s network of neighbors, who then disseminated them to the Washington Post, NBC News, and CNN. They depict the facade as it is today: pure marble, no Trump name, just the building’s original identity subtly reappearing.
Miller expressed her belief about the purpose of the tarp without holding back. “The Trump administration does not want to see that building without Trump’s name on the facade before they could go through all their appeals,” she stated. It makes sense to read. There is no clear structural or safety reason for the tarp that has been made public. When asked why it was still up almost two weeks after the removal was finished, the Kennedy Center remained silent.
Here, the legal context is important. On May 29, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper declared that the Kennedy Center’s board had overreached itself when it decided to add Trump’s name to the structure in December. In 1964, just after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Congress named the center in his honor. Judge Cooper succinctly stated, “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” Regardless of who appointed them, the board lacked the authority to override that.
The actual name change, which was short-lived (the full name was “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts“). Outside of the administration’s immediate circle, there was hardly any institutional support for this branding initiative. Artists pulled out. Sales of tickets decreased. Even before the legal dispute over the name was settled, the controversy surrounding the center’s direction under Trump’s hand-picked leadership had started to erode the programming schedule.
In all of this, it’s easy to forget about the Kennedy Center’s current issues, which go beyond its name. A federal judge is pressuring the center to continue operations while renovations are planned for the building. The financial situation is not favorable. It’s difficult for an organization that was once one of Washington’s most dependable cultural pillars to deal with reduced staff, a diminished schedule, and constant political noise.
The tarp itself has a subtly symbolic quality. A piece of cloth and some scaffolding concealed a name that had been legally removed. Regardless of the motivation, the result was to postpone the time when Washington and the nation could just see the structure as it was always meant to be. The marble remains in place. It was present at all times. And you can now see it once more, at least in pictures.
