“Kennedy Center – panoramio” by jiazi is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Amid a wave of performer cancellations and boycotts following its controversial renaming, President Trump plans to shut down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.” The President announced the radical turn in his sustained takeover of the cultural institution in a post to his Truth Social feed, emphasizing that financing is has been secured to address unspecified structural issues.

“The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!,” Trump wrote. “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.”

Asked today at the White House for more details on the intended renovations to the 55-year-old landmark and largest performing arts center in Washington, D.C., Trump estimated that the project would cost $200 million. In 2019, under former Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter, the theater underwent a $250 million renovation and expansion, which Trump derided as wasteful.

“I’m not ripping it down,” Trump said on the extent of the changes. “I’ll be using the steel. So we’re using the structure, we’re using some of the marble and some of the marble comes down.”

Kennedy Center staff told CBS News that they learned of the closure, set to coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, through Trump’s post. After the employees’ lack of knowledge about the change was made public, the Kennedy Center’s interim president Richard Grenell, who assumed his post after Trump’s overthrow of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees last February, wrote in a staff-wide email that “we recognize this creates many questions as we plan to temporarily close most of our operations.”

“In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!”

Since the Kennedy Center’s Trump-installed board of trustees voted to rename the cultural institution as the Trump-Kennedy Center, and affixed the President’s name to the building’s facade shortly afterward, many high-profile artists and ensembles have cancelled previously scheduled performances and distanced themselves from the institution. Recent departures include Philip Glass, Renée Fleming, the Washington National Opera, all-star jazz septet the Cookers, Doug Varone and Dancers, Chuck Redd and Béla Fleck.

“Performing there has become charged and political, at an institution where the focus should be on the music,” said Fleck, whose cancellations with the National Symphony Orchestra were ascribed to “personal issues” on the venue’s website. “I look forward to playing with the NSO another time in the future when we can together share and celebrate art.”

Read more about Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center here.