Donald Trump has ordered the tearing down of a popular statue in the latest step of his MAGA makeover of the Kennedy Center.
The National Park Service will close an area around the performing arts hub on Wednesday and bring in a crane to yank Joel Shapiro’s Blue from the grounds.
The dancing figure becomes the latest casualty of Trump’s redesign of the center on the banks of the Potomac. Internal documents obtained by The New York Times suggest that the sculpture was tapped early in Trump’s second term for removal.
Former curator of visual arts and special programming at the Kennedy Center, Josef Palermo, was laid off in March as Trump installed lackeys across the board. He said on Tuesday that the lack of announcement about the removal was worrying.
“The Kennedy Center is in effect holding these pieces in trust for the American people, and there should be a lot more transparency,” he said.
The statue had been in situ outside the REACH theater expansion since 2019. The trust that owns it will determine its next location.
Hands Off The Arts, an activism collective that aims to protect art threatened by Trump’s politicization of the center, reacted angrily to the news.
“First they came for the façade, now they come for the grounds. Say your final goodbyes to Blue, Joel Shapiro’s beloved figure outside The REACH,” an Instagram statement from the group read. It referenced Trump’s ill-fated efforts to have his name permanently fixed to the front of the center.
“Wednesday, September 2, 2026 will forever be known as the day the United States government tore down a piece of public art at the behest of a petulant crybaby. But it won’t be the last.”
The group said they had “paused” a protest scheduled for Friday, but added that it had “some other ideas up our sleeves.”
“Knowing President Trump’s blue state hysteria, bet the Kennedy Center statue would stay in place if it were red. Or gold,” another commentator added.
Another person had a similar take. “Pretty sure if we slap tacky gold leaf gilding on it 47 would love it,” they said.
President Donald J. Trump has taken aim at the Reach, a $250 million expansion that marks the only structural addition to the Kennedy Center since its 1971 debut. Philanthropist David Rubenstein, the former Kennedy Center chairman ousted after Trump stacked the board with his own loyalists, primarily funded the project.
In a court filing pushing to put Trump’s name back on the front of the building, administration lawyers ridiculed the addition’s moniker, writing that “just seven years ago, the Center named a substantial portion of its grounds, ‘The REACH,’ without a semblance of protest. Nobody had any idea what it even meant.”
Despite the legal team’s confusion, the name is a deliberate acronym standing for Renew, Experience, Activate, Create, and Honor—a nod to President John F. Kennedy’s visionary ideals and the institution’s mission to make the arts accessible to the public.
The tearing down of Blue follows filings ahead of last week’s court appearance in which Trump administration lawyers suggested the building could be bulldozed and replaced with an outdoor amphitheater unless they could shut the place down for two years to carry out the renovations the president has deemed necessary.
They argued that the venue was “structurally unsound, fundamentally unsafe, and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital.”
Trump took control of the Kennedy Center after returning to office, replacing its leadership and installing a board that made him chairman. His obsession with it is one of the many ways he is trying to reshape Washington in his own image.
The 80-year-old former real estate mogul is also constructing a ballroom at the White House; building a helipad on the South Lawn; and planning a giant arch near the sacred Arlington Cemetery.
He also attempted to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American flag blue”—only for his handpicked contractors to damage the iconic landmark.
