Updated Aug. 13, 2026, 8:49 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON – The Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted to inscribe President Donald Trump’s name below the sign on the iconic institution’s building and once again temporarily close the bulk of the performing arts venue for renovations, testing the two key components of a federal judge’s order.
The actions came during a closed-door Aug. 13 board meeting on Zoom, according to a source with direct knowledge of the votes who confirmed deliberations reported first by The New York Times.
The board, composed mostly of hand-picked members selected by Trump, approved a resolution to add the inscription “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” directly underneath the Kennedy Center’s facade sign. The same resolution directs the center to honor Trump for saving the center from the “brink of disaster,” according to The Times, suggesting as another possibility the renaming of the center’s grounds to “the President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
The board voted to partially close the Kennedy Center for renovations, a project Trump has previously said would take two years. The plan calls for closing the Kennedy’s Center main building while keeping open a newer, significantly smaller theater wing called the REACH.
The planned inscription of Trump’s name is an attempt to work around a federal judge’s order in May to remove the president’s name from the center’s title, signage and branding. U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, in the same order, blocked the board’s March vote to close the center for two years for renovations, arguing that the action lacked serious consideration by the board.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the plaintiff in a lawsuit that led to the judge’s ruling, slammed the board’s latest actions as “more of the same.”
“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed. I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument,” said Beatty, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board, who is represented in court by the group Democracy Defenders Action.
Trump’s name was added to the Kennedy Center building in December 2025 after the president’s takeover of the board and renaming of the institution as the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”
In his May ruling, Cooper said the board violated the 1964 federal law that created the center in honor of President John F. Kennedy, arguing that the statute makes clear “the Kennedy Center must be named for, and is meant to honor, President Kennedy alone.” Congressional approval would be required to change the name from the Kennedy Center, the judge said.
The Kennedy Center on June 13 complied with the judge’s directive to remove Trump’s name from the building’s sign, but not until hours after a court deadline passed. The center’s Trump-aligned staff left up a massive tarp that prevents the public from seeing the sign without Trump’s name. The tarp remains over the facade of the center.
In blocking the board’s previous attempt to close the Kennedy center for renovations, Cooper said the decision was made hastily at the direction of Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, without the board having an opportunity to adequately review the matter.
The Kennedy Center’s legal counsel has argued that the judge did not rule against the concept of temporarily closing the center; rather, that the board’s vote was “inappropriate and that any subsequent vote must take more information into account.”
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.