Plaintiffs in Ongoing Kennedy Center Lawsuit Call for Leadership to Step Aside or for Judge to Appoint Receivership

The group of eight preservation groups that currently have a lawsuit pending to prevent changes at the Kennedy Center without congressional approval have called for the institution’s leadership to step aside or for the court to take the drastic step of putting the cultural organization into receivership, citing the leadership’s fiduciary duty to steward the Center.

The eight plaintiffs are the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, the DC Preservation League, the Docomomo US, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Cultural Landscape Foundation. (Their legal suit is separate from the one filed by Representative Joyce Beatty, who is a Kennedy Center trustee.)

A press release announcing these plans characterized the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees as “fiduciaries, not owners.” In a joint statement, the plaintiffs said, “If the current leadership of the Kennedy Center is unwilling or unable to exercise its fiduciary duty to protect the historic building and the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the court should consider appointing a receiver or replacing that leadership.”

ARTnews has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment but did not immediately hear back.

This week, the fate of the Kennedy Center has itself taken a dramatic turn. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the institution’s leaders said it would faced “certain fiscal collapse” and possible bankruptcy if it did not inscribe President Donald Trump’s name on the facade, according to a 57-page document that was circulated ahead of a meeting of the Kennedy Center’s trustees. That report also recommended closing the Kennedy Center this week.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled once again that any changes to the Kennedy Center’s facade would be illegal and violate a December ruling in which he said any such changes would require congressional approval. Trump’s name was briefly added to the facade last year but has since been taken down. To circumvent this, the Kennedy Center board had voted in August to have the facade read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” which is what Judge Cooper ruled on this week.

Then on Wednesday, Trump told reporters, “For us as an administration to want to do that, I think the Trump administration should be recognized,” according to the Post. Referring to reversing Judge Cooper’s ruling this week, he added, “Frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down.”

Shortly afterward, when the president landed at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, AFP photographer Brendan Smialowski captured images of Trump aboard Air Force One looking at a large poster that appears to say, “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”

The ongoing legal battle centers around the addition of Trump’s name to the official name of the Kennedy Center and inscribing his name in some form to its facade, as opposed to the needed capital repairs, which the board had originally said would force the Kennedy Center to close for two years to be realized. Congress has already appropriated nearly $257 million toward these repairs and other needs.

“No plaintiff in either Kennedy Center case has sought to prevent that essential work,” the eight plaintiffs’ release reads, adding “The current leadership should do the jobs it accepted: use the resources Congress provided for their authorized purposes, repair the Kennedy Center, raise the operating support it needs, restore its programming, and put the institution first. If it is unwilling or unable to do so, those responsible should step aside.”

The release adds, “If the current leadership will neither fulfill its fiduciary obligations nor step aside, judicial protection of the Kennedy Center will become necessary.”

In a press briefing, Greg Werkheiser, the founding partner of Cultural Heritage Partners and one of the attorneys for the eight plaintiffs, said his clients’ “first choice is not judicial management of the Kennedy Center,” but that they felt a “deep concern” over the escalating situation and a sense of “urgency” in this situation, which has been escalated by the Trump administration to the level that Judge Cooper has had to issue emergency rulings, to prevent any “permanent alteration that cannot be repaired” after the current leadership is no longer in their roles.

Instead, they would like for the Kennedy Center’s leadership to move forward with the renovations and raise any needed funds to do so, as is their fiduciary responsibility. “We feel an obligation no matter how realistic we think it is to first publicly and clearly call one last time on the trustees to particularly focus on their legal, fiduciary duties.”

Werkheiser said that his clients see a violation of fiduciary responsibility as it relates to “loyalty,” meaning that trustees “exercise [their] powers for the benefit of the institution, not to obtain a personal benefit, and to “care,” which he defined as a responsibility to “protect and administer the institution prudently. That’s important here because fiduciary duty isn’t simply a duty to do no harm; sometimes, it’s an affirmative duty to do what you reasonably can to protect the trust.”

Additionally, Werkheiser characterized Trump’s refusal to begin necessary repairs and raise any additional funds without having his name added to the Kennedy Center as a “hostage-taking” situation, adding that “he is legally obligated—if he has the capacity to raise money and they need it, he must raise that money or step aside.”

Referring to the Kennedy Center’s earlier comments, Werkheiser said filing for receivership does not require for the organization to be in bankruptcy and is often done to prevent bankruptcy proceedings. He added that his clients were waiting to file any legal documents to the effect of asking the court to decide on a receivership, which, as they are still vetting the legal theory that would back such a move with scholars.

While placing a cultural institution into receivership doesn’t have a one-to-one legal precedent, Werkheiser pointed to cases like Morgan v. McDonough, in which a Boston public school was put in a temporary receivership in the 1970s to integrate the school, or Inmates DC Jail v. Jackson and Brown v. Plata, both of which put prisons in receiverships because of inadequate care for inmates.

“The irrevocable loss of this iconic building — whether by intent, neglect or mismanagement — appears increasingly possible,” the plaintiffs added in their statement. “The court has invited our coalition of eight nationally recognized architectural and preservation organizations to raise additional requests for relief if new facts appear to warrant judicial intervention. We are on the verge of such a moment.”