President Trump urged Kennedy Center board members to vote to close the institution for a two-year renovation project, criticizing its previous financial management and physical condition at a news conference on Monday.

Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close for 2-Year Renovation Project

Ahead of the vote, President Trump criticized the center’s physical condition and previous financial management.

The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Monday to shutter the institution for a two-year renovation project after President Trump warned them that the building was in “very bad shape” and had been on “the verge of collapse” before he took over.

Shortly before the vote, Mr. Trump had assembled the board members — a vast majority of them allies whom he appointed — at the White House, where he urged them to approve his plan.

“What I know best in the world is construction,” Mr. Trump, the board’s chairman, said in those public remarks. “The best way to do it is close it, do it properly and reopen it, have a grand reopening. And when it’s finished it’s going to be far better than it was when it was originally built.”

A news release from the center, which will close in July, said the vote was unanimous.

The full scope of the renovations is not entirely clear. But Mr. Trump has promised that both structural and internal work was needed, saying on Monday that the building’s heating system would be “ripped out in its entirety,” and that new theater seating and new marble would be installed.

“You can’t have people walking over the marble every night, as it’s drying and setting, and going to a play,” Mr. Trump said during his remarks, which veered from criticisms of the center’s unions to commentary on the personal wealth of the board’s members.

The announcement of the plans to close last month prompted an uproar from Democrats, who have suggested that the decision was actually motivated by financial problems that have stemmed from declining ticket sales and cancellations from artists over the past year.