2026-09-19T16:00:29.096Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
今年春季，当唐纳德·特朗普总统的名字被下令从肯尼迪中心移除时，人们似乎看到了摆脱这位前总统对这座表演艺术中心管控的契机。
“我已指示商务部与国会完成所有必要安排，以实现该机构的完全移交，交由国会负责其运营、维护和管理，”总统在5月底的Truth Social帖子中写道，看似放弃了他一年前攫取的控制权。
两位知情人士告诉CNN，在十几名“当然成员”——这些人没有投票权，且不与特朗普结盟——中，甚至出现了这样的猜测：能否请回前董事会主席、亿万富翁慈善家大卫·鲁宾斯坦，帮助恢复该中心的筹款和节目策划工作。（CNN已向鲁宾斯坦置评请求。）
但其中一位消息人士称，在特朗普表示他将继续担任主席后，“这种猜测很快就烟消云散了”。人们曾希望他为这座纪念约翰·F·肯尼迪的纪念碑改名的行动已经结束，到头来不过是一厢情愿。
如今，距离2025年12月起重机首次将特朗普的名字安装到大理石外立面那天已经过去了九个月，这家机构却因这位仍深陷争斗的总统而濒临崩溃：内部灯光被切断，基础设施摇摇欲坠，抗议活动此起彼伏，法律诉讼接踵而至。
民主党籍俄亥俄州众议员乔伊斯·比蒂——同时也是一名当然董事会成员——提起的诉讼，导致法官作出裁决：必须将特朗普的名字从建筑上移除，且董事会不得完全关闭该设施。
特朗普却因这一法律挫折，反而加大了拆除这座建筑的威胁：本周，有人在空军一号的窗户内看到特朗普手持一张海报，上面似乎写着“拆除肯尼迪中心”。尽管联邦法官已下令，任何重大变更前都必须提前30天通知，但目前完全不清楚事态将如何发展。
周五深夜，特朗普政府在法庭上辩称，肯尼迪中心必须关闭两年，请求主审法官批准这一请求，以便对这座“危险破败、年久失修”的建筑进行翻新。
同一天，据两位知情人士透露，十余名肯尼迪中心员工被裁员，包括首席发言人，这让本已捉襟见肘的员工队伍雪上加霜。肯尼迪中心拒绝对裁员置评。
特朗普称，此前的领导层应为糟糕的财务状况负责。在本周一场充满争执的董事会电话会议上，他还指责比蒂提起诉讼，称此举加剧了该中心的衰落。
特朗普和他在董事会的盟友辩称，必须重新将他的名字刻在建筑上，以重振筹款工作，但现任和前任官员、表演者以及行业官员表示，恰恰是特朗普的参与疏远了该中心的捐赠者，促使数十名艺术家取消演出。
“百老汇剧目不会回来了，艺术家们也不会来了，”一位熟悉节目策划讨论的消息人士说。“只要唐纳德·J·特朗普还是主席，这些捐赠者就不会回来。”
与该中心有联系的现任和前任肯尼迪中心官员、音乐家、艺术家及其他表演者表示，无论特朗普的名字最终是否留在建筑上，他的接管都已给肯尼迪中心留下了永久性印记。
“美国各地有许多很棒的剧院，它们无疑都是文化生态的一部分，”玛莎·格雷厄姆舞蹈团总裁兼执行董事拉鲁·艾伦说，该团与该中心有着50年的合作历史。“但肯尼迪中心——它是我们国家的首都，是我们的国家展示台。”
另一位近期离职的肯尼迪中心消息人士直白地说：“它永远不会再是从前的样子了。”
CNN已向白宫置评请求。
特朗普对肯尼迪中心的关注，标志着他从第一任政府到第二任政府的显著转变：除了执意将美国首都按自己的意愿重塑之外，他还将矛头对准了全国范围内的艺术、文化和教育支柱机构。
在第一任期内，特朗普基本避开该场馆，在肯尼迪中心荣誉奖颁奖典礼上，由于获奖者威胁如果他出席就抵制活动，他也没有到场。白宫甚至在2017年的一份声明中表示，总统和第一夫人梅拉尼娅·特朗普将不参加，“以便获奖者能够在不受任何政治干扰的情况下庆祝”。
当肯尼迪中心在2020年3月的新冠疫情救助法案中最初获得2500万美元拨款时，特朗普为这项援助辩护称：“肯尼迪中心做得非常出色，令人难以置信。”
然而九个月后，他在批评随后的2020年12月新冠救助法案时，单独挑出了给该中心的4000万美元专项拨款——这预示了他未来的不满情绪。
到2024年竞选期间，特朗普明确表示，打击所谓的“觉醒主义”将是第二任总统任期的支柱之一。他在竞选活动中似乎并未专门针对肯尼迪中心，但就职第三周时，他就已经启动了接管计划。
“按照我的指示，我们将让华盛顿特区的肯尼迪中心‘再次伟大’，”特朗普在2025年2月的Truth Social帖子中写道。
特朗普称，他已解雇了鲁宾斯坦的董事会主席职务，以及“不认同我们对艺术和文化黄金时代愿景”的董事会受托人。
这次接管成为特朗普一系列重塑美国首都行动的第一张多米诺骨牌，包括拆除白宫东翼、关闭并改造华盛顿特区最繁忙的公共高尔夫球场，以及他在阿灵顿国家公墓附近建造一座250英尺高的凯旋门的持续努力——所有这些项目目前都在法庭上引发争议。
尽管特朗普广泛批评文化机构和博物馆，但他对它们的控制能力有限，主要手段是削减其联邦拨款。联邦政府已大幅削减了国家艺术基金会和国家人文基金会等艺术资助机构的预算，并拒绝和收回了数千万美元的拨款，对象是那些与总统价值观不一致的组织。
但肯尼迪中心是少数几个总统能够通过掌控董事会来施加更大权力的文化机构之一。他也曾试图将联邦资助的史密森学会置于管控之下，但结果喜忧参半。
特朗普接管董事会一周后，他被任命为该中心主席，并任命长期忠实盟友理查德·格雷内尔担任执行主任。
“所以我们接管了肯尼迪中心，”特朗普对记者说。“我将担任主席，我们将确保它没问题，不再有‘觉醒’。这个国家再也不会有‘觉醒’了。”
他的新职位引发了多场演出取消，其中最引人注目的是百老汇音乐剧《汉密尔顿》。
在特朗普本人主持的2025年12月肯尼迪中心荣誉奖颁奖典礼前夕，总统开始将这座建筑称为“特朗普肯尼迪中心”。
2025年12月18日，董事会正式投票通过，将该设施更名为“唐纳德·J·特朗普与约翰·F·肯尼迪纪念表演艺术中心”，称这一变更为了表彰特朗普接管中心后所做的工作。
次日，新的标识被安装，将特朗普的名字添加到建筑外立面。
一场法律与财务的风波
随之而来的法律诉讼和演出取消潮，对一家部分预算依赖门票销售的机构来说，构成了特殊挑战。
作为一家非营利组织，根据最近签署生效的拨款法案，肯尼迪中心上一财年从国会获得了约3700万美元拨款。但其大部分收入来自节目策划和私人捐赠。根据向美国国税局提交的文件，在拜登政府执政的2024财年，肯尼迪中心的收入为3.07亿美元。
去年，格雷内尔试图重塑该中心的日程表，用他的话说，就是增加更多适合家庭观看的节目。应第二夫人乌莎·万斯的推荐，他引入了改编自热门儿童漫画小说系列的音乐剧《狗狗侠》。
与此同时，该中心成为举办贴合特朗普阵营活动的场所，包括纪录片《梅拉尼娅》的首映式、查理·柯克纪念活动以及国际足联世界杯抽签仪式（该组织在仪式上授予特朗普和平奖）。
但在特朗普的名字被添加到建筑后，一波表演者退出，门票销售下滑。多位消息人士今年早些时候告诉CNN，肯尼迪中心的上座率极低，以至于连续数月不得不“填充空座”——这一剧院术语指通过提供免费或折扣票来填满座位。
“演出周围弥漫着绝望的气氛。没人来看演出，”自2021年起担任肯尼迪中心驻场作曲家的卡洛斯·西蒙告诉CNN。
西蒙的驻场任期即将结束，他指出，美国国家交响乐团现在正在华盛顿的其他场馆演出。他说，他留在肯尼迪中心的职位“是为了安抚那些仍在那里努力做好音乐呈现工作的员工”。
“我真的很遗憾，它变成了这样一个政治工具或棋子，但音乐仍得继续，”他说。
在演出取消的浪潮中，特朗普于2月宣布，肯尼迪中心将于7月4日关闭两年，以进行翻新——批评人士怀疑，此举更多是为了掩盖不断萎缩的观众群体，而非真的需要如此大幅的关闭。
得益于特朗普的“一项宏伟法案”，肯尼迪中心去年还获得了大量资金，其中包含2.57亿美元，用于该中心“开展资本维修、恢复、维护积压工作和安全设施的必要开支”。
但董事会辩称，只有特朗普的帮助才能筹集到翻新建筑所需的资金——而特朗普明确表示，他的帮助只会以冠名权为交换条件。
与此同时，格雷内尔的继任者马特·弗洛卡本周在比蒂一案中告诉法官，出于安全考虑，该中心需要暂时关闭。
即便这座建筑得以保全，官员们表示，要让该中心的节目恢复——尤其是百老汇剧目——仍将需要数月甚至数年时间。
当然，这是假设演出方愿意回归的前提下，一位参与中心节目策划的消息人士说。
“如果我们现在就开始与地产公司接触，来回磋商并达成协议，我们基本上要到2027年中到2028年才能让百老汇巡演重返肯尼迪中心，”这位消息人士说。“完成所有这些筹备工作需要这么长时间。”
CNN的凯特琳·波兰茨对本报道亦有贡献。
‘It will never be the same’: How Trump turned on the Kennedy Center and brought it to its knees
2026-09-19T16:00:29.096Z / CNN
When President Donald Trump’s name was ordered removed from the Kennedy Center this spring, it seemed that an opening to move on from his reign over the performing arts center might have emerged.
“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” the president wrote in a late-May Truth Social post, seemingly relinquishing the control he’d seized a year prior.
Speculation even bubbled up among some of the more than a dozen“ex-officio,” board members — who don’t get a vote but are not allied with Trump — over whether the former board chairman, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, could be brought back to help restore the center’s fundraising and programming, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. (CNN has asked Rubenstein for comment.)
But after Trump said he would remain chairman, “it kind of all squelched pretty quickly,” one of the sources said. The hope that his crusade to rename a monument dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy had ended turned out to be wishful thinking.
Instead, nine months from a cold December day when cranes first placed Trump’s name on the marble façade, the institution has been brought to the brink by the president still very much engaged in a fight: lights have been turned off inside, infrastructure is crumbling and protests swirl while legal battles mount.
A lawsuit brought by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio board member, led to a judge’s ruling that Trump’s name had to be scraped off the building and that the board could not shut down the facility altogether.
Trump has only ratcheted up his threats to tear down the building in response to the legal setbacks: The president was seen with a poster this week through the window of Air Force One that appeared to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” Though the federal judge has since ordered a 30-day notice be given before any major change happens, it’s not at all clear where things go from here.
Late Friday night, the administration argued in court that the Kennedy Center must close for two years, asking the federal judge in the case to allow it so that the “dangerously dilapidated and decrepit” building can be renovated.
On the same day, over a dozen Kennedy Center employees were laid off, including its lead spokesperson, according to two sources familiar with the matter — gutting an already skeleton staff. The Kennedy Center declined to comment on the cuts.
Trump has said previous leadership is to blame for the dire financial situation. During a contentious board call this week, he also blamed Beatty for bringing litigation that, he said, has contributed to the center’s downfall.
While the president and his allies on the board argue his name needs to be re-affixed to the building to revive fundraising, current and former officials, performers and industry officials say it is precisely Trump’s involvement that alienated the center’s donors and prompted scores of artists to cancel their performances.
“The Broadway productions will not come back, the artists will not come back,” said a source familiar with discussions about programming. “None of those donors will come back as long as Donald J Trump is the chairman.”
Current and former Kennedy Center officials, musicians, artists and other performers with ties to the center suggest that Trump’s takeover has added a permanent imprint on the Kennedy Center, whether or not his name ultimately ends up on the building.
“There are wonderful theaters throughout this country, and they are certainly part of the cultural ecology,” said LaRue Allen, president and executive director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, which has a 50-year history with the institution. “But the Kennedy Center — it is our nation’s capital. It is our national showcase.”
Another Kennedy Center source who recently left said simply: “It will never be the same.”
CNN has asked the White House for comment.
Trump’s focus on the Kennedy Center is emblematic of a notable shift from his first administration to a second one that has targeted arts, cultural and educational pillars across the country, in addition to Trump’s unrelenting desire to remake the nation’s capital to his liking.
In his first term, Trump mostly avoided the venue, skipping the Kennedy Center Honors after awardees threatened to boycott the event if he attended. The White House even said in a 2017 statement that the president and First Lady Melania Trump were not participating “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.”
And when the Kennedy Center initially received $25 million in funding in a March 2020 Covid stimulus package, Trump defended the aid, saying: “The Kennedy Center, they do a beautiful job, an incredible job.”
Nine months later, however, he singled out a $40 million line-item for the center while criticizing a subsequent December 2020 Covid aid bill — a foreshadowing of his future disaffection.
By his 2024 campaign, Trump made clear that going after so-called “wokeism” would be a pillar of a second presidency. He didn’t appear to single out the Kennedy Center on the campaign trail, but in his third week in office he’d already set a takeover plan in motion.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,”Trump wrote on Truth Social in February 2025.
Trump said he had fired Rubenstein as chairman of the board as well as board trustees “who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”
The takeover became the first domino in a cascade of Trump moves to remake the nation’s capital, including the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, the closure and remodeling of the busiest public golf course in Washington, DC, and his ongoing efforts to build a 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery — projects all still being fought over in court.
Though Trump has widely criticized cultural institutions and museums, he’s been able to exert only so much control over them, primarily by reducing their federal funding. The federal government has gutted the agencies that fund the arts, including the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and denied and rescinded tens of millions of dollars in grants to organizations that don’t align with the president’s values.
But the Kennedy Center is one of the few cultural institutions where the president has been able to flex more of his power by seizing control of the board. He has similarly tried to bring the federally funded Smithsonian Institution to heel, with more uneven results.
A week after Trump’s board takeover, the president was named as its chairman, and he installed longtime loyalist Richard Grenell as executive director.
“So we took over the Kennedy Center,” Trump told reporters. “I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”
His new role prompted several cancellations, including most notably the Broadway show “Hamilton.”
Leading up to the center’s Kennedy Center Honors in December 2025, which Trump himself was hosting, the president began referring to the building as the “Trump Kennedy Center.”
On December 18, 2025, the board made that declaration official by voting to rename the facility the “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” saying that the change honored Trump’s work at the center after taking over.
One day later, new signage was installed to add Trump’s name to the building’s façade.
A legal and financial saga
The legal battle and wave of cancellations that has ensued present particular challenges for an institution that makes part of its budget from ticket sales.
Operating as a non-profit, the Kennedy Center received roughly $37 million from Congress in the last fiscal year, according to the latest appropriations legislation signed into law. But the bulk of its revenue comes from programming and private donations. In fiscal year 2024, during the Biden administration, the Kennedy Center reported $307 million in revenues, according to documents filed with the IRS.
Last year, Grenell sought to revamp the center’s calendar to include, in his words, more family-friendly programming. He brought in “Dog Man: The Musical,” based on the popular kids’ graphic novel series, at the recommendation of second lady Usha Vance.
At the same time, the center became a place to host events that lean in to Trumpian ties, including the premiere of the documentary “Melania,” a Charlie Kirk memorial and the FIFA World Cup draw (where the organization gave Trump a peace prize).
But after Trump’s name was added to the building, a wave of performers pulled out, and ticket sales sagged.Multiple sources told CNN earlier this year that attendance at the Kennedy Center had been so low that for months it had to “paper the house” — a theater term that means to fill seats by offering free or discounted tickets.
“There was a haze of despair around the performances. Nobody was showing up to performances,” Carlos Simon, the Kennedy Center composer-in-residence since 2021, told CNN.
Simon, who is in the last year of his residence, noted that the National Symphony Orchestra is now playing at other venues in Washington. He said he’s stayed in his role at the Kennedy Center “for the morale of the folks who were still there trying to do the good work of presenting music.”
“I feel really bad that it’s become this political tool or pawn, but music still has to go on,” he said.
Amid the cancellations, Trump announced in February that the Kennedy Center would close for two years on July 4 to allow for renovations — a move critics suspected was to being made more to provide cover for the shrinking pool of patrons than because of the need for such a dramatic closure.
The Kennedy Center also received an influx of funding last year thanks to Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which contained $257 million for the center to pursue “necessary expenses for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures.”
Yet the board has argued only Trump’s help can muster the funds to renovate the building — and Trump has made clear his help will only come with naming rights.
In the meantime, Matt Floca, Grenell’s successor as executive director, this week told the judge in the Beatty case that the center needs to temporarily close due to safety concerns.
Even if the building survives, officials say getting the center’s programming to return — particularly Broadway shows — would still take months if not several years.
That is under the assumption, of course, that performances would be willing to return, said the source involved in the center’s programming.
“If we started now in terms of engaging with property companies, going back and forth and getting a deal made, we could have Broadway tours back at the Kennedy Center by the basically middle of ‘27 into ’28,” the source said. “That’s how long it takes for all these pieces to be put in place.”
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
