The Kennedy Center's facade has been stripped of Donald Trump's name following a monthslong legal fight, but the public still cannot see the evidence. A tarp and scaffolding went up on June 13, one day after a federal judge's deadline to remove the signage, blocking any view of what lies beneath.
The coverings have remained in place nearly two weeks after Trump's name was actually taken down from the performing arts center. A federal judge had ordered the removal in May, determining that Trump's name had no legal right to be there in the first place.
Mallory Miller, a former Kennedy Center employee and founder of the activist group Hands Off the Arts, provided photos showing the tarp and scaffolding to NBC News. She believes the covering is deliberate. "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.
The Kennedy Center did not explain why the tarp and scaffolding remain or when they might come down. A Kennedy Center official told the federal judge on June 13 that all Trump references, both online and on the building itself, had been removed.
The signage battle traces back to December, when Trump's handpicked board voted to rename the building "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts." That decision triggered swift legal action from those who argued the board had no authority to change what Congress had established.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sided with critics of the change. "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," he wrote in his May 29 order. The board's unilateral action to add Trump's name violated the institution's governing structure, the judge found.
Congress had originally designated the venue the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, two months after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963.
Miller, who worked in the artistic programming department at the center, credited grassroots opposition with forcing the removal. "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."
The continued presence of the tarp has raised questions about whether obscuring the facade serves purposes beyond construction or weatherproofing. The Kennedy Center's silence on the timeline for removing the coverings has only deepened speculation about the reasoning behind keeping the removal out of public view.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The tarp says more than any statement from the Kennedy Center could. Sometimes what you hide tells you exactly what you're thinking."
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