The Kennedy Center Honors will move to a new location for the first time in its history, as it will be held at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
The ceremony will take place at the new venue on Dec. 7, a center spokesperson said. The honorees have yet to be announced, and a broadcast partner will be announced at a later date. Its contract with CBS, which broadcast the event since its origin in 1978, expired last year.
The center’s main building, where the honors have been held, is currently closed amid an assessment for safety risks, officials with the complex have told a federal judge.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex officio member of the board, sued the center earlier this year over its plans to close the complex for two years for a large scale renovation. She also challenged the board’s decision to add Donald Trump‘s name to the center.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ruling that only Congress could add another name to the center, and ordering that the president’s name be taken down from its facade and other materials. He later rejected the board’s plans to add Trump’s name to the facade in other ways. The judge also prohibited the center from closing for two years unless the board more fully weighed its impact. The center has said that the recent closure is temporary, with safety risks being assessed on a week-to-week basis following the recent collapse of part of the ceiling.
The Dec. 7 date is the traditional weekend for the ceremonies. Trump hosted the event last year, with honorees including Sylvester Stallone and George Strait. At the time, its then-president, Ric Grenell, said that the ceremony had raised $23 million.
But the finances of the center have deteriorated. Its attorneys from the Justice Department warned last month that it was facing “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.” The attorneys later told an appeals court that Trump had raised $17 million “to keep it afloat.”
The attorneys wrote that “the funds are fast being expended, and without the Trump Administration, the accounts will dry up and Center will continue its deterioration into an unsafe structure that will eventually collapse, with a determination to follow on how to proceed and what to do with the site.”
Since Trump took over the center and ousted board members appointed by his predecessors, the center has seen a drop in ticket sales, while artists have canceled performances. The Washington Post and CNN have recently done deep dives on the dire state of Kennedy Center finances. Major shows ended in July, which had been the original time frame for when Trump and the center planned for the long-term closure for renovations.
