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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Steven Sloan

Inside the Kennedy Center as it prepares for a 2-year renovation

Kennedy Center - (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

To President Donald Trump, the Kennedy Center is a “tired, broken, and dilapidated” building in urgent need of repair. To artists like Jane Fonda and Billy Porter, it’s a protest site symbolizing the administration’s effort to reshape the nation’s cultural institutions.

For the Kennedy Center’s new leadership, it’s a gargantuan structure corroded by water damage so severe that steel in some places is tissue-thin.

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