President Donald Trump said he plans to close the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts for about two years to carry out renovations after his takeover prompted a significant backlash.
“I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday, using the new name he and his board imposed on the building.
Trump has paid significant attention to the Kennedy Centre during his second term in the White House, becoming its board chair and renaming it the Trump Kennedy Centre without approval from Congress.
His decision to close the whole facility comes after a number of prominent artists cancelled performances at the facility, and with ticket sales declining. The Washington National Opera moved its operations from the centre to an auditorium at George Washington University partly because of new funding rules. The primary cast of Les Miserables refused to perform in May when Trump was in attendance, leaving it to their understudies.
Such popular performances as the musical Hamilton, the Martha Graham Dance Company and singer Renee Fleming have declined to keep their bookings. Renowned composer Philip Glass informed the Kennedy Centre in January that he no longer wanted to debut a new symphony based on a speech by Abraham Lincoln at the centre along the Potomac River.
For years, the centre was a key cultural landmark in the nation’s capital. It was home to the opera and the National Symphony Orchestra. The annual Kennedy Centre Honours celebrate a select group of performers in a national broadcast. Trump hosted the show himself last year.
Back in 1962, President John F. Kennedy initiated fundraising for a proposed national cultural centre. With the project renamed after Kennedy shortly after his 1963 assassination, the centre opened in 1971 with a requiem mass by Leonard Bernstein honouring the slain president.
Trump said the Kennedy Centre will begin closing on July 4. In December, Trump posted photos of marble armrests he was contemplating for a redesign.
Trump said he talked to experts about whether the renovation of the centre should happen partially while it keeps operating or through a full closure.
“If we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer,” Trump wrote. “The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!”
The work “will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Centre, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before,” Trump said in his post.
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