The Kennedy Center board, filled with President Donald Trump’s hand-picked appointees, voted on Thursday to close the famed cultural institution for two years for renovations and to again add Trump’s name to the facade, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of the board, said in a statement.
According to Beatty, the front of the Washington building would read: “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”
In addition, Beatty said, an outdoor space would be named “The President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
“This morning’s decision to close the Center and the surprise agenda item to put Donald Trump’s name back on the building was more of the same,” she said in the statement. “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.”
White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston, in a brief statement in response to the board’s vote, said: “Under President Trump’s bold leadership, the Kennedy Center is on its way to becoming the finest cultural institution anywhere in the world.”
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Congress created the center and designated it as a living memorial in 1964 shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s death.
Beatty on Thursday pointed to a law prohibiting the adding of “memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials” to the Kennedy Center, a statute U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper cited when he ordered Trump’s name be removed from the building in May.
“A federal judge already rejected the board’s unlawful attempt to rename the Kennedy Center, and told Donald Trump’s handpicked board that its last closure vote was ill-informed and preordained,” Norm Eisen, a lawyer representing Beatty said in a statement. “Today’s vote is more of the same, and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts.”
The board is under an order by Judge Cooper to report to him on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting within five days.
Cooper said the update should also indicate the board’s plans for the tarp that now still covers the facade of the building.
Cooper’s May order invalidated the board’s March vote to close and renovate the center start, finding the board essentially rubber stamped a hastily made plan without properly weighing the impacts on the center’s programming and finances. Cooper suggested in his ruling that the trustees could fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities by moving ahead with a more fully developed plan.
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