Why did Donald Trump announce this week that Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will be closed for the next two years for extensive renovations? A project of that scale had not been announced. Renovations were already underway with financial backing from a specific congressional appropriation. Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) could not have been alone when she confessed that the announcement came as “a big surprise to me.” The Kennedy Center’s own board of trustees was “blindsided.”
Trump administration officials now maintain that the venue will soon be unusable without significant repairs and maintenance, although it will remain open just long enough to participate in the events centered around the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4. It’s certainly true that the Kennedy Center cannot maintain its current pace of operations without the repairs Congress funded last year, even though Trump himself said that renovations would not disrupt the center’s operations as recently as last October. It’s also true, however, that the Kennedy Center cannot keep up its usual tempo in the absence of artists willing to perform there.
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