On Wednesday, US District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the Kennedy Center to explain to the court why the building’s facade is currently obscured by a tarp. He wrote that within seven days of the Kennedy Center board’s next meeting—or before July 31, whichever is sooner—the Department of Justice must file a report that includes information about “the purpose for and status of the tarp and scaffolding that Defendants have erected on the front portico of the Center, to the extent they remain at that time.” In a court filing last Friday, the Department of Justice indicated that the Kennedy Center’s board plans to meet in mid-July.
The tarp went up in the early hours of June 13, as workers were preparing to remove the “Donald J. Trump” lettering from the front portico of the Kennedy Center. It obscured the view of hundreds of onlookers, who were awaiting the removal of Trump’s name. In Friday’s court filing, attorneys for Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty—who is currently suing the Kennedy Center over the renaming and planned closure—wrote that the continued presence of the tarp is a “petty act of defiance” meant to “undermin[e] the restoration of the Kennedy Center’s name,” and an attempt to “willfully sabotag[e the] Kennedy Center’s iconic façade to assuage Defendants’ vanity or massage broken egos.”
The Department of Justice did not address the existence of the tarp in Friday’s filing, but a spokesperson for the Kennedy Center previously told the Washington Post that the tarp and scaffolding will remain “while crews evaluate how to repair the exterior marble” and also inspect “slabs on the underside of the overhanging roof.” No timeframe was given for that work.
