# Commission of Fine Arts The **Commission of Fine Arts (CFA)** is a small independent federal agency, established by Congress in **1910**, that advises the federal government on matters of **design and aesthetics** affecting the nation's capital — the architecture of public buildings, memorials, parks, and coins, and the visual character of Washington, D.C. Its seven commissioners are appointed by the president and serve staggered terms; the body has no regulatory enforcement power of its own but its review is a required step for many federal and District design decisions, giving it real influence as a guardian of architectural continuity. For most of its history the CFA operated as a low-profile, expert body that favored restraint and historical coherence in the capital's public spaces. Its independence was functional rather than statutory in the way of the multi-member regulatory commissions: it advises, and its advice has traditionally carried weight because administrations chose to defer to it. ## KB significance: the North Portico column swap The CFA entered the Right Wing KB through the Trump administration's physical remaking of the White House. In **March 2026**, a Trump appointee to the Commission urged replacing the White House **North Portico's Ionic columns with more ornate Corinthian ones** — matching the columns Trump selected for his separate ballroom project. The proposal would alter the most photographed facade of the executive mansion, trading the restrained neoclassical order of the original design for a grander, more imperial aesthetic. The episode illustrates a recurring pattern in the KB: an expert advisory body, historically a check in favor of continuity, repurposed under Trump appointees into a vehicle for the president's personal taste. The column proposal is tracked in detail alongside the scaffolding, the door fortification, and the ballroom itself on the [[White House Ballroom Project]] page, and connects to the broader "fortress presidency" thread that also runs through the [[Lafayette Square Fencing Plan]]. Like the packing of other independent bodies, it fits the [[Unitary Executive Theory]] logic of bending nominally independent institutions to direct presidential control — here applied not to regulation but to the symbolic architecture of the state itself. ## See Also - [[White House Ballroom Project]] - [[Lafayette Square Fencing Plan]] - [[National Park Service]]