The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will close this summer for two years of renovations, the center’s Trump-appointed board unanimously voted on Monday.
The president has insisted the lengthy closure is necessary to carry out sweeping updates to the nation’s flagship arts center, which has suffered a string of artist cancellations in recent months under the Trump administration. He said Monday changes will include replacing the complex’s heating system and marble.
“What I know best in the world is construction,” President Donald Trump said Monday at the White House. “The best way to do it is close it, do it properly and reopen it, have a grand reopening. And when it’s finished it’s going to be far better than it was when it was originally built.”
Renovations will began after July 4, according to the center.
Trump has said the project could cost around $200 million, below the $250 million Congress approved for upgrades last year.
Democrats have suggested the closing of the center is in-part to distract from a string of high-profile issues since Trump took it over, including the Washington National Opera cutting ties, and the declining attendance for major performances.
“I was very clear in advising them that while I’m not against renovations if they need to be done, I am totally against the process, it being unlawful, them not checking with the Congress,” Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center board member who has sued to block the closure, told The New York Times on Monday.
Monday’s vote comes after an announcement Friday that interim Kennedy Center leader Richard Grenell was stepping down.
On Monday, the board voted to name Matt Floca, the former vice president of facilities at the center, as the new executive director.
Last year, Trump cleaned house at the Kennedy Center, replaced its typically bipartisan leadership with a board of allies, and attempted to officially add his name to the center’s title, a move critics say is not legal.
The board also installed Trump as its chairman last February.
Since the leadership change, Trump has often made himself and his allies the stars of the show at the center.
In December, Trump became the first president to host the Kennedy Center Honors, though the news-making move did not translate into a wide audience. The show reportedly suffered a sharp decline in viewers compared with previous years.
Earlier this year, the Kennedy Center hosted the premiere of an Amazon-backed documentary about first lady Melania Trump.
The president has taken a marked interest in remaking Washington monuments, compared with his recent predecessors.
In addition to the Kennedy Center makeover, the president demolished parts of the White House as part of a plan to build a new ballroom and East Wing complex.
Trump’s interest in national signs and symbols goes beyond the capital and his administration has carried a wide-ranging effort to scrub national parks and historic sites of content it deems overly critical, often singling out material that deals with the history of racism in the U.S.
Source: independent.co.uk