Barbra Streisand, the EGOT-winning singer and actor, condemned President Donald Trump’s remaking of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in a statement published on her website on Thursday, September 17, 2026, calling the battle over the Washington, D.C., landmark “galling and painful to witness.”
Streisand, 84, a Hollywood and Broadway star and a Kennedy Center honoree, praised the institution’s stature. “The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has stood as one of America’s great cultural venues. Many of the world’s most accomplished actors, musicians, singers and dancers have graced its stages,” she wrote, adding, “Renaming the Cultural Center in JFK’s honor was a fitting choice, because he was a true champion of the arts.”
The complex stands as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963; the center took his name that year and welcomed its first audiences in 1971. Streisand traced her own stake in it to 2008, when she was included in the 31st annual class of Kennedy Center honorees — a distinction she said carried weight far beyond her career.
“You can easily imagine my indignation at seeing this revered institution become the subject of such a bitter struggle over one man’s name and unchecked ego,” she wrote.
What the Courts Have Ordered
Trump, 80, has made the arts complex a preoccupation of his second term. He installed himself as its chairman after returning to office and moved to add his own name to the building. In May, a federal judge blocked him from keeping that name on the property, inside or outside. Construction workers erected scaffolding and then stripped the “Donald J. Trump” lettering from the facade.
On Tuesday, September 15, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the name could not go up without approval from Congress. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’ blessing,” Cooper said in the ruling.
Streisand wrote that after the name came down, a “humiliated Trump ordered a large tarp placed over the facade, where it remains today.” She said he is still trying to leave his mark on the building, working through what she called his “Trump-aligned board.”
A Shutdown and an Ultimatum
Later the same day, Trump announced that the center’s board had voted, almost unanimously, to shut the building immediately for safety reasons and to begin what he described as a process of reconstruction. That work, he wrote, cannot start until the D.C. Circuit rules on the name the board approved. If the appellate ruling goes against him and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, he wrote, the renovation and reconstruction will not happen at all.
The Trump-appointed board voted to close the landmark for two years, arguing that the shutdown was unavoidable because the center is sliding toward bankruptcy and cannot cover its payroll. Trump has said the performing arts center can reopen only once his name is approved, has threatened to scrap a planned $257 million renovation if the lettering does not go back up, and has floated leveling the building altogether should his demands go unmet. In his post, he said $17 million he had raised was already deposited in the center’s account to keep it solvent.
Streisand seized on the timing of the closure. “And now, a thoroughly defeated Trump has announced that the Kennedy Center is being closed for what the completely stacked board describes as a major renovation. Oddly, when Trump’s name was still on the building, there was no discussion of closing it!” she wrote.
Kennedy’s Family Has Pushed Back
Streisand joins members of Kennedy’s extended family who have objected to the president’s attempts to attach his name to the memorial, among them Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s only grandson. Maria Shriver, 70, another member of the family, wrote on X in December 2025: “Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man.”
Shriver, in the same post, questioned what the effort was really about, asking why anyone would place his own name above another man’s on an existing memorial.
Streisand framed the dispute as a betrayal of the building’s original purpose — to pay tribute to a president she said believed artistic achievement was proof of a free society, and to sustain a place where artists could challenge, inspire and provoke audiences. “He believed that when the creative impulse cannot flourish freely, a society loses its vitality,” she wrote of Kennedy. She closed by urging Americans to vote in the midterm elections in November.
The legal fight has not slowed. On Thursday, September 17, a federal judge ordered the board to give 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the institution — a requirement that reaches the president’s threats to tear the complex down. The building is shut, the president’s name is off its facade, and whether it goes back up rests with the courts.