The board of the Kennedy Center voted on Monday to close the arts complex for two years, proceeding with Donald Trump‘s plans for a massive renovation.
The vote, taken at a meeting at the White House, was unanimous, the center said in a press release.
Trump, who serves as the center’s chairman, announced plans for the closure in February, in what he said will speed up the renovation project.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex officio member of the board, is challenging the closure in a lawsuit, warning that the ultimate plan may be to tear down the arts institution, as Trump did to the East Wing of the White House. She won an emergency court order on Saturday to be allowed to express her opposition at Monday’s meeting, but a judge declined to rule that she also had the right to vote.
The meeting’s start was opened to the press, and Trump talked extensively about the need for the center to be renovated, claiming that without the repair “it would have almost fallen down. It was in very bad shape.”
He also defended the decision to close the complex, indicating to reporters that the plans include new marble decor and new seating.
“When you do marbles, you can’t have people walking over the marble every night as it’s drying and setting and going to a play,” Trump said. “What I know best in the world is construction. The best way to do it is close it, do it properly and reopen and have a grand reopening.”
Still, the Kennedy Center has seen a significant slowdown in ticket sales since Trump took control of the board last year, according to analyses in The Washington Post and The New York Times. He fired board members appointed by his predecessors and installed a longtime loyalist, Ric Grenell, as its president. Much of the audience base for the center, though, comes from the D.C., Maryland and Virginia areas, which voted overwhelmingly against Trump in the 2024 election. The region also was the hardest hit by the massive cuts to the federal workforce during his second term.
When the board added Trump’s name to the center in December, the arts institution faced a new round of artist cancellations, including figures like Phillip Glass and Renee Fleming, while the Washington National Opera left its longtime home. Those added to previous cancellations in protest, including the show Hamilton, last year.
At the board meeting, Trump also announced the departure of Grenell. The new leader of the center will be Matt Floca, who will become chief operating officer and executive director, after having been vice president of operations. He had been working with Trump on the renovation plans.
Unlike Trump’s plans for a new White House ballroom, financed with private donations from corporations and others, the Kennedy Center renovation is receiving $257 million in funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed Congress last year.