By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The board of Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is due to vote on Tuesday on whether it will continue to operate, with directors largely installed by President Donald Trump arguing that its future hinges on having his name on the complex.
Trump's name has been added to and then removed from one of the nation's top performing arts venues once already this year after federal judges ruled that only Congress could legally change
the name of what it designated to be a "living memorial" to Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, who was assassinated in 1963.
The effort is part of Trump's broader vision of leaving his cultural and aesthetic mark on the U.S. capital, including a large new ballroom to replace the White House East Wing he ordered demolished, a troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and a planned "triumphal arch" near the nation's main cemetery honoring its war dead.
BOARD SAYS TRUMP NAME VITAL
The board, made up of Trump appointees with Trump himself serving as president, will vote on immediately closing the center for an estimated two years of renovations to the main building, which the board says has crumbling ceilings from water damage.
Blocked from renaming the center itself, the board had also been expected to take up a second resolution to add Trump's name to the exterior marble "below the name of the center" to credit him for planned renovations, according to court filings on Monday.
But attorneys at the U.S. Justice Department, which is representing the center in court, said in an overnight filing that the board would focus solely on the center's closure at Tuesday's meeting due to the "recently exacerbated structural emergencies."
Hours before the meeting, a federal judge in Washington held a hearing in a lawsuit brought against the board by Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the center's board due to her position in Congress.
Beatty, who successfully sued to stop the center being renamed after Trump, has again asked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to block the board from adding Trump's name to the building's facade. The judge said he would likely issue an order prior to the board's meeting.
The board has taken the position that honoring Trump's efforts to aid the center was necessary to ensure his continued commitment.
"The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center," the draft resolution said.
The draft resolution also said the center's finances are dire, and it will be unable to honor its payroll obligations or routine maintenance contracts "within a matter of weeks."
PERFORMANCES CANCELED, REVENUE DOWN
After Trump began exerting more direct control over the Kennedy Center last year, artists canceled performances in protest, the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra have been forced to find other venues, and revenue has cratered.
Tuesday's meeting follows an earlier vote on August 13, where the board approved the addition of an inscription honoring Trump, who found fame as a New York real estate developer, and renaming the site where the center sits to the President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
Cooper wrote in his May ruling: "The Kennedy Center's organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board's unilateral say-so."
Workers stripped Trump's name from the Kennedy Center in June and left the center's exterior masked by scaffolding and a white tarpaulin.
The board's draft resolution, which includes 10 different options for how the Trump inscription could be rendered, had asserted that its plans are consistent with Cooper's order.
The inscription options being weighed by the board include: "A Legacy protected through the Generosity of President Donald J. Trump" and "Renovation, Restoration, and support by President Donald J. Trump."
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella and Bo Erickson in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis)
