The Kennedy Center is now officially renamed The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
On Friday, workers spent hours engraving the current President’s name on the front wall of the historic Washington D.C. building.
The alteration happened just a day after the board members of the center, who were handpicked by Trump himself, voted to rename the institution by including the Republican President’s name.
However, deceased President John F. Kennedy‘s family are heavily disappointed with the move.
Shortly after pictures of the centre’s new title block surfaced online, JFK’s niece Kerry Kennedy took to X to express her anger and disappointment.
Hoping Trump would go out of power in the next election, Kerry exclaimed that she would go to the building with a pickax herself and take down the President’s name.
“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!” Kerry wrote.
Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!! pic.twitter.com/ZLPhd7fU31
— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) December 19, 2025
The center, originally established in 1958, was a memorial built to honor JFK in 1964 following his assassination. According to US law, the building can not be dedicated to anybody else.
However, Trump had other plans. This year, he fired the entire board of the center and chose its new trustees while declaring himself to be the chairman of the board.
Then came the day to vote for the renaming, and as expected, the board unanimously voted to add ‘The Donald J. Trump’ to ‘The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center.’
Apart from JFK’s family members, historians and Democratic leaders also criticized the move.
Ray Smock, the director emeritus of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University, emphasized that only Congress has the power to change the center’s name.
According to Al Jazeera, he said, “The Kennedy Center was named by law. To change the name would require a revision of that 1964 law. The Kennedy Center board is not a lawmaking entity. Congress makes laws.”
Former First Lady of California and niece of JFK, Maria Shriver, also posted a lengthy note on X to slam Trump. She highlighted that adding Trump’s name to the memorial of another man does not make him great.
She penned, “This will always be the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A great man would have said to his hand-picked board, ‘Thank you, but the building already has its name. Let it stand. Let it be. I don’t need that.’ But then again…”
Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man. Quite the contrary. Putting your name on top of someone else’s doesn’t mean that people will speak of you in the same breath as the other man. Putting your name above another man’s… pic.twitter.com/3aoxB64XlA
— Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) December 19, 2025
Meanwhile, this is not the first time that Trump has renamed a historic building after himself. Earlier this month, the United States Institute of Peace was retitled the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
Coming back to the Kennedy Center, the institute was opened as the national cultural center of the US in 1971. The center organizes around 2000 performing arts events every year, including dance, music, and theater shows.
