The board of the Kennedy Center has voted to rename the performing arts centre the Trump-Kennedy Center, according to the White House.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on social media that the board voted unanimously to make the change due to “the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building”.
Leavitt also congratulated the late President John F. Kennedy and wrote, “This will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur.
The change will certainly meet controversy, particularly in Washington DC where the centre has been an iconic landmark since it was built and named for Kennedy.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he was “surprised” and “honoured” by the decision. Earlier this month, though, Trump appeared to suggest the possibility by joking about a name change at an event for the annual presentation of the Kennedy Center Honors.
Shortly after taking office, Trump fired all the centre’s board members, and replaced them with allies, who then voted to make Trump chairman of the board. His close adviser Richard Grenell became board president.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Second Lady Usha Vance, as well as a number of other administration officials. and political allies are also currently on the board.
The president also secured about $257m (£192m) in congressional funding to cover major renovations and other costs at the venue, which recently hosted the FIFA World Cup draw.
“We saved it,” Trump said of the centre on Thursday. “It was really in bad shape, physically.”
While Leavitt and Trump both claimed that the board had “unanimously” voted to rename the centre, at least one board member has disputed that.
“This was not unanimous,” said Ohio Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, one of the board’s members. “I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move.”
Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, a Trump critic currently running for Congress, said on X that the “microphones were muted” and the board’s “vote NOT unanimous”.
Other members of Kennedy’s family have also criticised the reported change.
Joe Kennedy III, a former House member and grandnephew of the late president, posted on X that “the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law”.
“It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” he added.
Kennedy’s niece Maria Shriver wrote that “it is beyond wild” that Trump “would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable”.
“It’s downright weird. It’s obsessive in a weird way,” she wrote.
Work on a national performing arts centre began in the 1950s and after Kennedy, the 35th president, was assassinated in 1963, Congress decided to turn it into a living memorial to him.
Some US lawmakers and legal scholars said that because the centre was named in a 1964 law, Congress must vote to make the name change official. A measure to call the centre’s opera venue the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House, for example, was introduced as part of a spending bill this summer. The bill has not yet come up for a vote.
Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill who, by law, are ex-officio members of the board – including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries – said in a statement that “federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without Congressional action”.
“At today’s meeting, a sitting Member of Congress was muted, and participants were prevented from speaking – actions that reflect a troubling lack of transparency and respect for the rule of law,” they added.
Any requirements for a vote, however, would not necessarily prevent the centre from changing its name on its website or tickets, and potentially on the exterior of the building itself.
A similar name change took place at the Department of Defense – now called the Department of War – without congressional approval in September.
Trump’s involvement in the centre has been criticised by some political opponents as unnecessary political interference in the arts by the White House.
Soon after he took over the centre, Lin Manuel Miranda and his producing partner cancelled a planned run of Hamilton there, and other visiting artists have scrapped their scheduled appearances. Dozens of staff members, some in charge of making important artistic decisions, have been fired or resigned, as well.
At the same time, locals appear to have stayed away from performances at the Kennedy Center, with the Washington Post and other local news outlets reporting that ticket sales and subscriptions have fallen.
Earlier this year, the president said he was “98% involved” in the selection of this year’s Kennedy Center honourees, which included action star Sylvester Stallone and members of the rock band KISS.
At the time, Trump said he had rejected “wokesters” from being considered for the honour.
In June, during Trump’s first appearance at the Kennedy Center since returning to the White House, audience members both booed and cheered him and First Lady Melania Trump as they entered the presidential box.