The administration of US president Donald Trump has dismissed all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), a group of experts in the fields of art, urban design and architecture who advise the federal government on the aesthetics of memorials and projects involving government buildings in Washington, DC. The firings come as Trump pursues construction of a White House ballroom nearly twice the size of the White House residence itself after razing the East Wing and a triumphal arch at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.
“We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies,” a White House spokesperson told The Washington Post, which first reported the news.
A member of the CFA received an email from a staff member in the White House personnel office on Tuesday (28 October) that stated: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the Commission of Fine Arts is terminated, effective immediately.”
The six members of the CFA dismissed yesterday are the architects Bruce Redman Becker and Peter D. Cook, the landscape architect Lisa E. Delplace, and the urban planners Bill J. Lenihan, Justin Garrett Moore and Hazel Ruth Edwards. They were all appointed by former president Joe Biden; members, who are not compensated for their work on the commission, serve four-year terms.
Becker told the Post that the commission “plays an important role in shaping the way the public experiences our nation’s capital and the historic buildings it contains, which serve as symbols of our democracy”.
The CFA was established by the US congress in 1910 as an independent federal agency advising the president, members of congress and both the federal government as well as the government of the District of Columbia on aesthetic matters pertaining to “the federal interest and the dignity of the nation’s capital”, per the commission’s website. It reviews designs for medals, coins, memorials and renovations to government buildings, as well as private development projects in certain heritage districts in Washington, DC.
The CFA’s activities—including a planned meeting on 1 October—have been on pause since that day due to the ongoing US government shutdown. Its next meeting is scheduled for 20 November, pending the reopening of the government.
Trump’s purge of the CFA follows a slew of budget cuts, mass layoffs and programme reviews across all federal agencies involved in the arts, from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Since returning to office in January he has also purged the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointed new leadership that swiftly elected him board chair. And he has sought to exert pressure on the Smithsonian Institution, the US’s largest museum group, including by attempting to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery and launching a wide-reaching review of eight Smithsonian museums’ activities.
The White House’s goal of installing more Trump-friendly members to the CFA comes as the president is fine-tuning his plans for the new White House Ballroom, reviewing the scale and design of his desired triumphal arch and seeking to build a “National Garden of American Heroes” in time for next summer’s 250th anniversary of the founding of the US. In August, Trump issued an executive order dubbed Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again mandating that all federal buildings embrace "classical and traditional architecture".
