Trump-Backed Plan Calls for Removal of Kennedy Center's Joel Shapiro Sculpture

The National Park Service is scheduled to close a section of the Kennedy Center on September 2 and employ a crane to extract Joel Shapiro’s “Blue” sculpture, a dancing figure that has stood outside the REACH theater since 2019. Internal paperwork obtained by a major newspaper indicates the piece was earmarked for removal early in President Trump’s second term as part of his broader redesign of the performing-arts complex on the Potomac.

The move follows the March layoff of former visual-arts curator Josef Palermo and the installation of Trump loyalists across the Center’s leadership. Hands Off The Arts, an activist collective defending threatened artworks, denounced the demolition as another example of the administration’s politicization of cultural spaces. The trust that holds the sculpture will decide its next location.

The controversy surrounds the $250 million REACH expansion, funded largely by philanthropist David Rubenstein, and coincides with other Trump-driven construction projects at the Kennedy Center and the White House. Critics argue the removal reflects a pattern of using federal authority to reshape iconic public venues.