Preservation Extremists Threaten Kennedy Center Demolition
Protesters formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center on Friday in a brazen attempt to preserve the performing arts complex for its congressionally intended purpose. The anti-demolition demonstrators mobilized after President Donald Trump’s handpicked board closed the center and a photograph showed Trump reviewing a document apparently labeled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper then required 30 days’ notice before major physical changes, recklessly placing federal procedure between the president and a building that has not yet displayed his name in sufficiently architectural lettering.
Trump defended the possible demolition as an urgently needed act of historic preservation. “Nobody has protected the Kennedy Center like me, nobody,” Trump said. “Sometimes you have to remove the entire historic building and replace it with something much more historic, preferably something with my name in very large gold letters.” Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty’s legal challenge has further emboldened the militant preservation movement, whose members maintain that a congressionally established memorial to President John F. Kennedy should continue memorializing President John F. Kennedy. Officials described that interpretation as narrow, outdated and dangerously dependent on the meaning of words.
Demonstrators carried “Hands Off the Arts” signs and demanded that the national cultural institution remain available to artists and audiences, advancing the radical theory that public buildings should serve the public rather than function as enormous presidential nameplates. Administration allies warned that leaving the Kennedy Center intact could establish a destabilizing precedent under which libraries would be expected to contain books, museums would display history and monuments would honor the people named on them. The center’s continued existence has already left Washington exposed to ballet, orchestras, theater and other organized cultural activity commonly associated with civilizations that failed to prioritize branding. Federal officials are therefore working to restore order by protecting the Kennedy Center from the dangerous possibility of remaining the Kennedy Center, because demolition is now the only recognized form of historic preservation.
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