At the height of legal and political tumult at the Kennedy Center last summer, board members discussed moving the iconic eight-foot, 3,000-pound bronze bust of President John F. Kennedy from the Grand Foyer while the main building closed for renovations.

They reasoned the move to a newer building would not only secure the artwork but ensure the campus remained a living memorial to the 35th president, according to sources familiar with the board discussions.

What they didn’t know – but would soon find out – was that the bust is bolted into the foundation of the building, multiple feet underground, and moving it wouldn’t be logistically feasible. So, it will remain in place, sources say, and be shielded during construction.

The fate of the bust, which was commissioned and gifted by the Kennedy family, underscores the haphazard efforts in recent months to catalog and protect the treasures in the Kennedy Center. The building houses hundreds of irreplaceable pieces of art and antiquities – including tapestries, sculptures and chandeliers – that have been donated or loaned by other countries and benefactors.

Worried donors, artists and their family members have been calling and emailing the Kennedy Center for months, asking about what’s being done to protect the artwork, whether their pieces will be temporarily moved, and if they’ll one day be returned, according to half a dozen people who spoke to CNN on the condition they remain anonymous.

Some donors are suggesting arrangements for their pieces to be moved to museums and other places – away from the Kennedy Center. And some told CNN they feared speaking out publicly while the artwork they care about is still inside the center.

“I want to get that sculpture out of there,” said one person who donated a piece to the center.

Apprehension over the collection began to fester late last year when officials devised a plan for permanently removing artwork that envisioned possible “disposal” through various means, including “return to country of origin, transfer or exchange with another institution, public sale, or destruction,” according to internal documents reviewed by CNN.

Then, President Donald Trump, who is chairman of the Kennedy Center board, repeatedly stoked fears about the artwork with threats of demolishing the performing arts center, the removal last month of a major outdoor sculpture from the center’s grounds and the addition of a gold-leaf portrait of himself.

A view of the sculpture "Blue" by Joel Shapiro, and the Link, a covered pathway that connects the original building and plaza to the REACH, a multi-use complex at the Kennedy Center, in August 2019. Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post/Getty Images Gold-leaf portraits, including one of President Donald Trump, on display in The Reach at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on September 2./Redux

Kennedy Center officials now say the proposal CNN reviewed was never envisioned as a sweeping purge of artwork. They insist the “cornerstone of the collection – historic international gifts given to the Center for its opening – remains intact” and that the institution is exploring adding further works.

Many of the pieces were given as gestures of goodwill and in commemoration of John F. Kennedy. On the day of his assassination, the American sculptor Robert Berks began work on what would become the bust that was installed on the day the institution opened in 1971.

Officials also tell CNN that all artwork will be “fully safeguarded” during the renovation. Some pieces will be temporarily relocated, they said, if necessary to ensure they’re protected and that safety is maintained during construction. And some pieces won’t be moved.

For instance, an iconic starburst Lobmeyr crystal chandelier, a gift from Austria that’s 60 feet wide and illuminated by more than 3,200 bulbs, is expected to stay during the renovation. A plan for the bronze bust of Julius Rudel outside the Opera House, the first artistic and music director of the center, is being discussed.

President Donald Trump looks down from the Presidential Box in the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 17, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images “We remain in regular contact with the foundations and entities who have donated art to the Center,” a Kennedy Center spokesperson told CNN.

Meanwhile, Trump’s renovation plans – and his efforts to put his name on the facade – are still the subjects of a court fight. Officials say the REACH, a smaller venue on the Kennedy Center complex, will still serve as a temporary living memorial to JFK.

With the Kennedy Center’s doors temporarily closed and officials readying for a two-year renovation, art donors and enthusiasts are scrambling to understand what’s happening and fearing the worst – from artwork becoming collateral damage during construction to being accidentally thrown away.

Josef Palermo, a former curator at the institution, described the Africa Lounge being cleared out in one day. The room housed dozens of works donated by African nations, including 12-foot double doors carved from a 700-year-old tree in Nigeria.

“Walking into it when it was hollowed out and darkened and my heart really sank,” Palermo told CNN in an interview. “The room was completely stripped bare.”The room is now being used for storage.

The Kennedy Center says the African room art remains on site and that preservation efforts are underway.

“There is a major concern that a lot of this artwork is being pushed around the center,” one person close the Kennedy Center who works with several donors said.

The institute has seemed open to finding a way to accommodate suggestions for artwork to be displayed elsewhere, according to several people who spoke to CNN.

But these conversations are happening in an ad hoc manner, they said, often driven by donors and families of the artists, and not being initiated by the institution.

“It is a little bit disjointed response,” the person close the Kennedy Center said. “Responses on this have been very inadequate or not clear, or you know ‘everything is safe and sound, rest assured’ kind of thing,” the person said – but donors are “not given any detail in any way.”

A worker removes crystal from a chandelier, to be cleaned, in the Grand Foyer of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in January 2013. The chandelier is one of sixteen that hang in the building, a gift from Sweden. Matt McClain for The Washington Post/Getty Images The system for cataloguing art inside the Kennedy Center had been disorganized, sources say. Adding to the disarray this year, the center’s finances tanked, scores of staff were laid off and changes were made to the interior decor. At the same time, archival materials have been used as decorations in different offices throughout the building.

When the center underwent layoffs this spring, some sources said that staff inadvertently took home mementos, such as such as signed Kennedy Center Honors posters that are technically part of its archives.

Some gifts and valuable assets, including the spare crystals for the chandelier from Austria, are housed in a fire- and flood-proof storage facility at the center.

The arts institution also rents a storage facility in Virginia and just renewed the ten-year lease. That’s where some of the remaining marble, donated by Italy, that makes up the white facade of the building is kept.

And earlier this year, the Kennedy Center hired a lead archivist, Olivia Herschel, to oversee and manage its catalogue of artwork.

Now, seven months later, the center said in a statement to CNN that “for the first time in our institution’s history, the collection has been comprehensively cataloged, marking a significant step in the preservation efforts of new leadership.”

Herschel also has become an unofficial liaison with donors and artists seeking answers. Sources who spoke to CNN say they’ve been in touch regularly and were given assurances they will be told of any developments with the artwork.

While sources describe her as engaged and respectful, they also question how much power she has to deliver on her assurances given the dynamics under the Trump administration. The center declined to make Herschel available for an interview.

The idea of a national cultural center that showcased the best of American music, art and drama started to take shape after World War II under President Dwight Eisenhower, who signed a law to create a national performing arts space on the banks of the Potomac River in 1958. The space was envisioned as an “artistic Mecca … that would be open to visitors from every land.”

Kennedy – a devoted patron of the arts – carried Eisenhower’s vision forward. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy helped lead efforts to raise money for the center and in 1962, during a televised fundraiser, the president told the nation why he believed the center would be invaluable.

“Today, as always, art knows no national boundaries,” he said. “The poet, the artist, the musician, continues the quiet work of centuries, building bridges of experience between peoples.”“Art is political in the most profound sense,” Kennedy added. Less than a year later, he was assassinated.

President John F. Kennedy, left, looks at a model of the Kennedy Center on October 8, 1963. National Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

A view of the construction of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, from the Potomac River in Washington, DC, on December 29, 1967. Warren K Leffler/US News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images At the time, Ralph Becker, the general counsel for the center, was tasked with helping to coordinate donations from foreign dignitaries. He later wrote that he began having discussions about renaming the institution in Kennedy’s honor within hours of the president’s death.

World leaders began flooding Becker with requests to donate artwork to the center after Kennedy’s assassination. Italy supplied the marble to form the facade of the building from the famed Carrara mountains – the same mountains that produced the marble for Michaelangelo’s David. Canada provided the curtains for the Eisenhower theater; France donated tapestries by Henri Matisse, and India created 20 specially designed planters for the Grand Foyer. Norway supplied 11 chandeliers for the concert hall, and Tunisia donated a reproduction of a 3rd century mosaic for the rooftop terrace.

With the future of the Kennedy Center building in limbo, sources who spoke to CNN wondered about the long-term plans for the artwork and whether Trump will replace it with pieces more to his liking.

Palermo, now a whistleblower, has said that he was told last year to remove all the outdoor art, including the abstract “Blue” sculpture, because Trump wanted “all new art for the reopening.”

The abrupt removal of that work in September seemed to confirm concerns, even as the Kennedy Center said deinstallation after seven years was “common practice.”

Kennedy Center officials tell CNN that there are no other planned or imminent changes to the artwork currently on display.

But this month, with no public announcement, the Kennedy Center convened its first “visual arts committee” – a panel of staff and board members who will aim to curate and expand public installations of performing and visual arts.

The committee will manage the addition of visual art through rotating displays that will be open to the public — like the recent addition of gold-leaf portraits on temporary loan to the REACH featuring Trump and Elon Musk.

A security guard patrols the lobby of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on July 6. Christine Kao/The Washington Post/Getty Images