White House Bashes Smithsonian Museums, Exhibitions, as “Woke”

White House Bashes Smithsonian Museums, Exhibitions, as “Woke”

The Trump administration on August 21 postedan unsigned article on the White House’s websitecalling out a number of Smithsonian museums for their exhibitions and messaging, which it sees as out of alignment with its own anti-diversity values. Titled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” the article listed institutions, exhibitions, and artworks that focused on such topics as race, transgender identity, and immigration. The museums that sparked presidential ire were theNational Museum of African American History and Culture, theNational Museum of American History, theNational Portrait Gallery, and theSmithsonian American Art Museum. Also included were two institutions that have not yet been built: theNational Museum of the American LatinoandAmerican Women’s History Museum.

Among the perceived transgressions were the Museum of American History’s presentation of an exhibition that “seeksto ‘understand evolving and overlapping identities such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, transsexual, transvestite, mahu, homosexual, fluid, invert, urning, third sex, two sex, gender-bender, sapphist, hijra, friend of Dorothy, drag queen/king, and many other experiences’”; the inclusion by the Museum of the American Latino of “programminghighlighting ‘animated Latinos and Latinas with disabilities’ — withcontentfrom ‘a disabled, plus-sized actress’ and an ‘ambulatory wheelchair user’ who ‘educates on their identity being Latinx, LGBTQ+, and disabled’”; and the Museum of African American History’s series educating visitors on “‘a society that privileges white people and whiteness’ — defining so-called ‘white dominant culture’ as ‘ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time.’”

Several artworks were mentioned, among them Hugo Crosthwaite’s 2022 A Portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and depicting the infectious disease expert who led the US Covid-19 response; the 2000 papier-mâché Immokalee Statue of Liberty, which holds a tomato rather than a torch and is meant to represent US farm workers from Mexico and Central America; and Amy Sherald’s 2024 Trans Forming Liberty, which portrays the Statue of Liberty as a trans woman. The work had been set to appear in Sherald’s solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery; on learning that the museum wished to remove the painting from the show to avoid provoking Trump, the artist canceled the exhibition.

“This is an unprecedented pressure campaign and the granularity here is shocking,” University of Massachusetts Amherst history professor and Smithsonian expert Samuel J. Redman told the New York Times. “This list, even from a cursory look, is cherry-picking various examples from an enormous and diverse museum.”

The White House’s continuing effort to influence culture at an independent institution it does not legally control presented a bright side for at least one artist. “You know the saying that there’s only good publicity?” Rigoberto A. González, whose 2020 canvas Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas was cited, told the Washington Post. “I’m thinking that maybe somebody will want to buy a painting.”