The Actors’ Equity Association has joined the chorus of critics slamming President Donald Trump’s “lawless” effort to rename The Kennedy Center.
“The new board of this institution, which has sought to stifle free and open expression in the arts, is preoccupied with the performing arts center’s name rather than its mission,” AEA executive director Al Vincent Jr. said in a Friday statement.
“This is a lawless move, and we ask Congress to affirm the Kennedy Center’s proper name,” he continued. “And on behalf of our members who want to continue safely earning a living there, we ask that the board of the Kennedy Center instead focuses on addressing its recent decline in ticket sales and loss in audiences.”
The White House announced on Thursday that the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts’ Trump-appointed board had “unanimously” decided to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center (although, the “unanimous” aspect of that vote has since been called into question).
“The Kennedy Center was initially designated, as President Lyndon Johnson put it, to be ‘a national project and a national possession,’ intended to ‘symbolize our belief that the world of creation and thought are at the core of all civilization,’” Vincent Jr. further noted. “It was named in honor of President Kennedy in the aftermath of his death, commemorating a president who championed the rights of the worker and the value of the artist.”
