President Donald Trump's name has come down from the front of the Kennedy Center in Washington, and for now a tarp covers the spot on the facade where it had hung. The removal marks a striking turn for one of the country's most prominent cultural institutions, which had carried the president's name on its entrance until the lettering was taken away over the weekend.
The takedown came despite a determined effort by Trump to prevent it. According to the account given on air, the president tried mightily to keep his name in place, mounting two separate legal challenges in just the last twenty-four hours before the name finally came down. Those last-minute efforts did not succeed, and the lettering was removed from the building all the same.
Rather than immediately reveal what lies beneath, crews left a shroud over the updated section of the facade. The covering was expected to remain in place for a time, with the tarp likely to come down only later, after the evening's high-profile festivities and fireworks elsewhere in Washington had finished. For now, the front of the building shows only the temporary covering where the name once stood.
Underneath the shroud is the institution's longstanding name, the one that had endured for decades before the recent change: the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Once the covering is lifted, that original lettering, honoring the former president for whom the center was built, is set to be on public view again at the venue's entrance.
The dispute over the name has played out against a backdrop of tension on the center's board. Among those caught up in it was Joyce Beatty, a congresswoman from Ohio who sits as an ex-officio member of the board. She was silenced, or muted, during a board meeting that had been held at Mar-a-Lago back in December, an episode that drew attention to how decisions at the institution were being handled.
The sight of a sitting president's name being removed from a national cultural landmark, after he had fought in the courts to keep it there, is an unusual one. With the tarp still covering the facade, attention now turns to the moment the shroud comes down and the restored name is revealed, closing one chapter in a naming fight that has drawn close scrutiny in the capital.