Manifest Density

Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close Main Building and Restore Trump’s Name

By Dr. Sebastian Thorne-Whitfield · August 13, 2026
Opinion

Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close Main Building and Restore Trump’s Name

The Kennedy Center board held a vote Thursday that it did not announce, on an agenda it did not distribute, over a Zoom call it did not make public. The result was, by the board’s account, unanimous. The institution will shut its main building for a two-year, $250 million renovation, and Donald Trump’s name will return to the entrance, rendering the complex the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” or, in the board’s preferred engraving, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

The Kennedy Center, whose main building is set to close for renovation.Sdkb (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons
The Kennedy Center, whose main building is set to close for renovation.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio trustee who attempted to object, says she was muted. Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, explained that Beatty had been granted “the privilege” of listening. One searches the literature on nonprofit governance for a framework in which