WASHINGTON — New photos of the Kennedy Center show President Donald Trump’s name has been taken down from the building’s facade after a monthslong court battle and the recent addition of a tarp blocking public viewing of the removed signage.
Scaffolding and a tarp erected June 13, a day after a federal judge’s deadline to remove Trump’s name from the iconic performing arts center, have hidden the removal from the public.
Mallory Miller, a former Kennedy Center employee and a co-founder of the activist group Hands Off the Arts, which provided the photos to NBC News, said she thinks the tarp’s continued presence is an intentional act to spare Trump’s ego.
“What is clear to me is the Trump administration does not want to see that building without Trump’s name on the facade before they could go through all their appeals,” Miller said Monday night.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night on why the tarp and scaffolding remained nearly 10 days after Trump’s name was removed.
The Washington Post first reported on the new photos.
Congress named the building the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the bill into law two months later, in January.
The changed signage in December read: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” That came after Trump’s handpicked board at the center voted to add his name to it.
A federal judge ordered last month that Trump’s name be removed, finding that the board had no authority to unilaterally rename the building.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote May 29.
The tarp’s continued coverage of the facade has sparked questions about why it remains and whether its primary purpose is to hide the removal of Trump’s name from the public.
A Kennedy Center official told Cooper on June 13 that all references to Trump — online and on the building itself — have been removed from the center.
Miller, who worked in the artistic programming department at the Kennedy Center, said “people power” is what made the difference.
“Trump thought he could come in and take this crown jewel of arts and culture,” she said. “We’re fighting back and telling him he can’t.”
