Pop singer-songwriter Paul Anka, music producer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country singer Barbara Mandrell will be recognized at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors — although the center itself faces an uncertain future.
The annual tribute — the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ most visible event — will draw an even bigger spotlight onto the beleaguered cultural center. (Last year’s gala celebrated George Strait, the band KISS, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor and Sylvester Stallone.)
This year, for the first time, the event will be held at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 7 as the center remains closed indefinitely for renovations. In mid-September, President Trump threatened to demolish the building unless his name was returned to the facade.
Trump’s name was first added to the building in December, a day after the center’s board of trustees, appointed by Trump, voted to change its name to the Trump Kennedy Center. In February, Trump said the center would close in July for two years of renovations.
Then in May, a federal judge ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the exterior of the building and blocked the planned two-year closure of the venue. The event is typically held in the Kennedy Center’s opera house along the Potomac River, but it has been shifted to the Capital One Arena.
In a court filing on Friday, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex-officio member of the board who has asked a federal court to block the center’s shutdown, argued that the Kennedy Center’s closure is meant to hide its financial decline under Trump. The court filing cited internal documents, including one from September that projected the center would run out of funding before the end of January.
As chairman of the center’s board, Trump had a hand in selecting this year’s honorees. He hosted last year’s ceremony, a touchstone in his pushback against what he has dubbed “woke” culture. It’s also a big change from his first term, when he skipped the event altogether. He’s the only president to miss the ceremony twice.
This year’s announcement did not address whether Trump would host the ceremony again. As of Monday afternoon, only Mandrell had reacted publicly to the news of being an honoree, writing on social media: “Receiving the Kennedy Center Honors is one of the greatest honors of my life. … Country music has been a gift to me, and I’m humbled that the songs and performances we shared continue to mean something to people.”
