A Chunk of the Kennedy Center's Grand Foyer Ceiling Came Down Friday Night

WASHINGTON — A piece of the ceiling inside the Kennedy Center's grand foyer broke loose and fell to the floor on Friday evening, punching a hole in the plaster overhead and scattering debris across the red carpet of the hallway that links the building's three main auditoriums. Nobody was injured, said Roma Daravi, the center's vice president for public relations. The damage happened during stormy weather in Washington.

Photographs released by the Kennedy Center itself showed the gap in the high ceiling and the rubble below it. Within hours the center's leadership had turned the accident into an argument. "The reality is, the place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it," Daravi wrote in a social media post carrying the images. In another she added: "There is no legitimate reason to further halt the renovations. The longer the delay, the worse the infrastructure gets."

The timing matters because the Kennedy Center's board, now aligned with President Trump, is in the middle of a court fight over exactly that question. The board wants to close the building for two years for a $250 million renovation and to put Mr. Trump's name on the facade. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in May that the name had been added illegally and ordered it taken down, and he blocked the administration from shutting the venue. In August the board voted again to restore the name, this time in a longer form: "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump." That vote is now before the same judge. Justice Department lawyers have told the court that donations for the renovation will dry up if the president's name does not go back on the building.

Daravi called Friday's failure "another example of the urgent need to close for renovation and revitalization, as our Chairman President Trump has championed," and said in a statement to The Associated Press that the collapse "stems from decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership, and there's no justification for further delays in restoring America's cultural center."

Critics of the closure plan were not persuaded. Grace Terpstra, who founded the community group Keep the KC to fight the shutdown, said she expects the board to seize on what looks like limited ceiling damage "to make the point that the whole thing needs to be shut down, that it's going to fall on everybody." She added: "I think they'll try to make it into a bigger thing and show that they've found a lot of other things."

The Kennedy Center is one piece of a much larger remaking of official Washington. Mr. Trump has already demolished the White House East Wing to make room for a ballroom. He plans a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery, a project the National Park Service says will start construction within weeks and run two to three years on a 20-hour-a-day, year-round schedule. A renovated golf course along the Potomac is also in the works. A group of veterans has sued over the arch, arguing the administration never got congressional approval to build it.

Changes at the Kennedy Center that do not require a judge's permission have gone ahead. Last week the center removed "Blue," the large stick-figure sculpture by the late artist Joel Shapiro that had stood outside since 2019. The center gave no reason, saying only that "we are honored to have been stewards" of the work.