New photos show that President Donald Trump’s name is indeed off the Kennedy Center, offering the first public look at the performing arts venue’s facade since crews removed the letters by court order.
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The images were taken last week inside the tarp-covered scaffolding that has hidden the title of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the nine days since crews removed Trump’s name. The images were first provided to the Washington Post by the activist group Hands Off the Arts before being independently obtained and verified by the Post.
“This is the picture the Trump administration does not want anyone to see, so it’s all the more important … that people have an opportunity to witness when they’re winning,” said Mallory Miller, co-founder of Hands Off the Arts.
On June 12, a 14-member crew erected scaffolding to comply with a court-ordered deadline to remove Trump’s name. The workers missed the deadline, taking down the letters around 3 a.m. Saturday. The Kennedy Center’s lawyers confirmed in a court filing later that morning the work was done.
But the center left the scaffolding and tarps in place. For nine days, barricades manned by security guards have kept people from approaching and blocked any view of the exterior.
The new photos show two rows of blank square panels, with black lettering just visible below. In older photos, Trump’s name occupied the bottom of the two blank rows.
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In a statement last week, Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi said the tarps and scaffolding “will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels.”
On Friday, lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio), an ex officio board member whose lawsuit led to the removal, accused Trump and his allies on the board of “willfully sabotaging Kennedy Center’s iconic façade to assuage Defendants’ vanity or massage broken egos.”
The trustees “appear to be actively undermining the restoration of the Kennedy Center’s name, in a petty act of defiance,” they wrote.
On Monday night, House Democrats on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the Kennedy Center and other federal buildings, said the center should take down “the shame scaffolding.”
“Now that the Courts have compelled President Trump to take his name off another man’s Memorial,” they said in an X post, “it’s time for a return to normalcy.”
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