The Smithsonian fights Trump with what he hates most

During President Donald Trump’s second term, one of his key goals has involved reshaping U.S. cultural institutions to suit his ideological project, and the Smithsonian in particular has become a target of his culture war against diversity and historical narratives that he perceives to be “woke.” Shortly after he entered office, he signed an executive order calling for the museum to remove “anti-American” narratives, which took special aim at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, arguing that aspects of it portrayed American and Western values as “inherently harmful and oppressive.”

While many speculated that this could mean the closure or radical whitewashing of exhibits involving issues like slavery or the struggles of minority communities, according to the Washington Post, the Smithsonian “has managed to push back and mostly hold its ground.” While it has been impacted by what the Post describes as “a few key losses,” it has succeeded at maintaining the majority of its programming through a strategy of sticking strictly to the facts.

For example, as the Post explains, “No single exhibition in Washington may be more scrutinized than the Portrait Gallery’s ‘America’s Presidents,’ and among its critics, apparently, was Trump, whose administration took issue with the wall texts that mentioned his impeachments among other low points of his first presidency.”

He took such issue with it that the White House forced out galley head Kim Sajet last June before hanging a new portrait of Trump along with what was referred to as a “tombstone” label bearing nothing but his name and basic facts of the image, eliminating text describing his administration.

But now, after a month-long closure for renovations, the exhibit has reopened, and arguably the biggest change is the return of a textual description of Trump’s first term, “warts and all.”

According to the Post, “Curators have found an elegant way to defuse political controversy around the most recent presidents. Trump’s tombstone label is gone, replaced with longer texts, one quoting from his Jan. 19, 2021, farewell address, and another that gives a basic résumé of his life, including his education, prior experience, inauguration dates, major legislative accomplishments and notable events. The same format, including extracts from farewell addresses, is now used for all the presidents since Jimmy Carter.”

But importantly, “among the notable events listed on Trump’s CV are ones that went missing earlier this year. The first and second impeachments, the insurrection, and the George Floyd protests of 2020 are included along with the Abraham Accords and the ‘Operation Warp Speed’ initiative that developed lifesaving covid vaccines.”

As the Post notes, the facts are back, if delivered with a much-changed tone.

“For all the presidents up to Carter,” explains the Post, “the Smithsonian uses an omniscient, authoritative voice, which it abandons for the more recent ones. ‘The presidency of James K. Polk reflected his belief in Manifest Destiny,’ begins one summary; Andrew Jackson ‘campaigned for president as a self-made man,’ reads another. Museum historian Mindy Farmer, who oversaw the refresh, says the move to just-the-facts bullet points for later presidents is a virtue, given that historians haven’t yet fully processed our most recent executives.”

“We want to wait for a scholarly consensus,” she said.

While the fight isn’t over, with the White House demanding a comprehensive content review out of a clear desire to continue pushing the Smithsonian toward the administration’s nativist historical agenda, as the Post notes, further meddling means “the administration will be in the awkward position of disputing basic facts rather than the interpretation of them.”

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