Washington DC - Protesters formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center on Friday, pushing back against President Donald Trump's threat to demolish it unless his name appears on its facade.
Crowds waved placards reading "hands off Kennedy Center" and broke out into song beneath the scaffolding and tarps that have remained in place since workers removed Trump's name from the building in June following a court order.
Last year, Trump took control of the Kennedy Center – inaugurated in 1971 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 – and has pushed for a major renovation, claiming the building had been left in a state of disrepair.
Like other projects around the US capital, the president has shown an unprecedented keenness to put his personal touch on plans, while testing the legal bounds of his executive authority.
Most recently, Trump threatened to permanently shut the center down if he remains banned from plastering his name across its facade. On Thursday, photographers spotted him looking at photos of its apparent demolition while aboard Air Force One.
Trump's short-lived renaming of the facility last year to the "Trump-Kennedy Center" drew immediate backlash, including a rapid decline in ticket sales, boycotts by artists, and a mass exodus of donors.
"It makes me sick to my stomach," Neal Racioppo, a Washington resident who runs marketing and communications for a theater, told AFP.
Trump "can't get his name on this cherished building, so he is depriving the world of what it could be."
Racioppo joined a human chain that formed as night fell on the imposing, white, marble building, with crowds sprawling out onto the esplanade overlooking the Potomac.
"It has been an important home for the arts for this city and this country and the world," Racioppo said. "What President Trump is doing is despicable."