Trump’s Kennedy Center Shutdown Plan Jolts Workers and Performers

NY Times  - The abrupt announcement by President Trump that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would close this summer for a two-year construction project plunged the Washington cultural institution into uncertainty Monday, raising questions about where its orchestra would play and what would happen to its subscribers and its hundreds of employees.

“We’re kind of in shock right now,” said Anne Vantine, the president of a union local that represents box office workers. She said she had spent much of the night after the president’s announcement fielding calls and texts from Kennedy Center employees who were fearful of losing their jobs.

Leaders of the National Symphony Orchestra, who had not joined an exodus of performers protesting Mr. Trump’s actions at the center — which included the Washington National Opera — told its musicians that the center had assured them it would help find other venues where they can perform while the renovation takes place....

... Mr. Trump’s announcement asserting that the center was dilapidated and needed to be closed and renovated into a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex” caught center executives, patrons, musicians, and even some members of the institution’s board of directors by surprise. The closing date, on July 4 as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, is just five months away.