The Kennedy Center Honors will move to a new location for the first time in its history, as it will be held at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC.
The ceremony will take place at the new location on December 7, said a spokesperson for the center. The winners have not been announced and a broadcast partner will be announced at a later date. The event’s contract with CBS, which had broadcast the event since its origin in 1978, expired last year.
The Kennedy Center’s main building, where the honors were held, is currently closed due to a security risk assessment, complex officials told a federal judge.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio board member, sued the center earlier this year over her plan to close the complex for two years for a large-scale renovation. She also took issue with the board’s decision to add Donald Trump’s name to the center.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that only Congress could add another name to the center and ordered that the president’s name be removed from its facade and other materials. He then rejected the board’s plan to add Trump’s name to the facade by other means. The judge also barred the center from closing for two years unless the board further evaluates the consequences. The center said the recent closure was temporary, with safety risks being assessed week by week following the recent collapse of part of the ceiling.
The date of December 7 is the traditional weekend of ceremonies. Trump hosted the event last year, with honorees including Sylvester Stallone and George Strait. At the time, its then-president, Ric Grenell, said the ceremony raised $23 million.
But the center’s finances deteriorated. His Justice Department lawyers warned last month that he faces “certain financial collapse within weeks” and that adding Trump’s name to the complex may be the only way to get him to “lead the financial rescue of the center.” Lawyers later told an appeals court that Trump raised $17 million “to keep it afloat.”
The lawyers wrote that “funds are being spent quickly, and without the Trump administration, the books will dry up and the Center will continue to deteriorate into a dangerous structure that will eventually collapse, with determination to follow on how to proceed and what to do with the site.”
Since Trump took the reins of the center and ousted board members appointed by his predecessors, the center has seen a decline in ticket sales, while artists have canceled performances. THE Washington Post and CNN recently took an in-depth look at the dire state of the Kennedy Center’s finances. The big shows ended in July, which was initially the period in which Trump and the center planned a long-term closure for renovation.
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