Kennedy Center Fires Back at Critics with Video of Damaged Ceiling: ‘Warning We Can’t Ignore’

(Photos via: @TKCOfficial on X)

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in really bad shape, according to the Kennedy Center’s official X account, which posted a series of pictures and a video on Saturday showing damage inside the building after recent storms in Washington, D.C.

The images showed a hole in the ceiling and debris and broken wood littering the red carpet in the entryway to the building, according to the pictures and video posted on X. A single yellow cone reading “Caution: Wet Floor” was placed on the carpet.

“Another warning we can’t ignore. A section of the Grand Foyer ceiling collapsed after this week’s storms. Thankfully no one was hurt,” the Kennedy Center posted. “Decades of deferred maintenance made this inevitable.”

The center closed due to the damage, which the facility claimed proved President Donald Trump’s claim that the center needs to be shut down and revamped.

“Chairman President Trump has been right: America’s cultural center needs to close, renovate, and be restored—now.”

A Kennedy Center spokesperson told PBS no one was hurt by the collapsed ceiling, but reiterated it proved Trump was right about the need to renovate.

“This structural failure 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,” Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the outlet.

The center named by Congress in honor of President John F. Kennedy has been in legal and operational limbo ever since Trump announced he was adding his name to the building late last year.

The X post comes amid an ongoing legal battle between the Kennedy Center board —  which has been stacked with Trump loyalists, including the president, who  appointed himself to the group — and board member Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), who sued in December to challenge what she called the center’s “illegal renaming” after Trump put his name on the outside of the building.

In February, Trump announced a plan to shutter the building for two years while it underwent a $250 million renovation — but both moves have been hit with a series of legal challenges.

Justice Department attorneys have argued the building is so “structurally unsound, fundamentally unsafe, and embarrassing” it may need to be demolished if Trump’s renovation is blocked in court.

And the president last week posted the “old and decrepit” center badly needs improvements so it can “attain greatness and prestige,” after it has been “losing a fortune” for years.

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