David Rubenstein, the former board chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has purchased Joel Shapiro’s “Blue” (2019) just days after the National Park Service deinstalled the iconic sculpture from center grounds.
The agency began removing late artist Joel Shapiro’s 24-foot-tall sculpture from the Kennedy Center’s REACH (Renew, Experience, Activate, Create, and Honor) campus on September 2, leaving its future to the Joel Shapiro and Ellen Phelan Foundation. Amid renewed attempts to stamp Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center facade and grounds, the seemingly nonsensical removal of “Blue” prompted condemnation from artists, cultural workers, and organizations like Hands Off the Arts.
A billionaire philanthropist who has donated to organizations including the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service charity, Rubenstein reportedly purchased the work for a sum of $2 million and will ultimately move “Blue” to the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Art, according to the New York Times.
Rubenstein was among several Biden appointees ousted from the bipartisan Kennedy Center board by President Donald Trump in February 2025. During his tenure, the philanthropist pledged $50 million to the center’s REACH expansion project, which intends to honor President John F. Kennedy’s vision of bridging divides between artists and audiences. When the REACH campus opened in 2019, Shapiro, who died in 2025, gifted “Blue” as an inaugural landmark that could be seen from Potomac Parkway and other major Washington, DC, thoroughfares.
Shortly after beginning his second presidential term, Trump replaced the former board with his own loyalist cohort and made himself chairman, the position formerly held by Rubenstein.
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