In a challenge to President Trump, the Smithsonian said on Monday that the president did not have the right to fire Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, despite his recent announcement that she had been terminated.
“All personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board,” said a statement from the Smithsonian, which oversees that museum and 20 others, as well as libraries, research centers and the National Zoo. “Lonnie G. Bunch, the secretary, has the support of the Board of Regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.”
The statement came hours after the Board of Regents, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed the president’s announcement at a quarterly meeting. When Mr. Trump said 10 days ago that he had fired Ms. Sajet, he called her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Sajet was not mentioned in the Smithsonian’s statement. But the board said it was asking Mr. Bunch to take steps to ensure the institution’s nonpartisan nature.
“The Smithsonian must be a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans,” the statement said. “The Board of Regents is committed to ensuring that the Smithsonian is a beacon of scholarship free from political or partisan influence, and we recognize that our institution can and must do more to further these foundational values.”
The statement said the board had directed Mr. Bunch to articulate expectations to museum directors about what is displayed in their institutions and to give them time to make any changes needed “to ensure unbiased content.”
Since Mr. Trump retook office in January, his administration has made a concerted effort to exert influence over cultural matters in Washington. The president is now chairman of the board at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where an ally has taken over as the interim director.
And in a recent executive order, Mr. Trump called on Mr. Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress. In his order, the president described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.
Mr. Trump’s announcement that he had fired Ms. Sajet referred to her support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The White House also provided to The New York Times a list of grievances that it says led to the president’s action, outlining what it described as Ms. Sajet’s acts of partisanship and public comments about racial and gender inequality in America.
The Smithsonian has long operated as independent of the executive branch, and the legal authority of the president to fire Ms. Sajet is questionable, according to the institution’s governing documents. The Board of Regents met last week and again on Monday, when the panel voted to restate its autonomy in operating the cultural complex.
The fight over Ms. Sajet’s tenure has further complicated matters for Mr. Bunch, who was already under pressure to navigate a recognition of presidential power while defending the institution’s autonomy. Created by Congress as a trust to be administered by the board and the secretary, the institution receives two-thirds of its $1 billion in annual funding from the federal government.
The Smithsonian’s silence after Mr. Trump’s announcement about Ms. Sajet, the first woman to lead the National Portrait Gallery, appeared to signal a reluctance to challenge the president. But the board on Monday reacted in a way that, if not a complete statement of support for Ms. Sajet, was a clear effort by the institution to reassert its autonomy.
Mr. Bunch’s own standing remains at some risk, given the president’s interest in directing matters at the Smithsonian and his aversion to diversity and inclusion efforts. Appointed secretary by the Smithsonian board during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Bunch made his reputation as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, whose exhibits include a review of the country’s legacy of slavery.
In April, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told The Times: “Lonnie Bunch is a Democrat donor and rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book. Fortunately, he, along with his garbage book, are complete failures.”
In that 2019 book, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump,” Mr. Bunch detailed a museum tour with Mr. Trump that included an exhibit describing the roles that countries like Portugal, England and the Netherlands played in the slave trade.
Mr. Trump said simply, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands,” the book reported.
“All I could say was let’s continue walking,” Mr. Bunch wrote.
Before joining the Smithsonian as a director in 2013, Ms. Sajet, 60, a Nigerian-born museum professional who had been raised in Australia and is a citizen of the Netherlands, had served in a number of positions in Pennsylvania. In her last post there, she served for six years as president and chief executive at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
In its list of grievances, the White House focused not on her résumé as a museum professional, but on remarks she made and exhibitions she had been associated with while leading the National Portrait Gallery.
It cited a 2015 article in The Georgetowner in which Ms. Sajet said she was “interested in the concept of outsiders, of a different kind of categories, including more women, more minorities.” The list also notes that in 2013 the National Portrait Gallery determined that “50 percent of all money spent on art would support diverse artists and portrait subjects.” (During its 50th anniversary in 2018, the museum celebrated that policy as one of its achievements.)
Mr. Trump has also been unhappy with how he has been represented in the museum with a photograph whose caption mentions that he was “impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021,” though it adds that “he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.” (The museum’s commissioned portraits are not displayed until a president leaves office.)
The wall text also notes: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election.”
Joe Morelle, the leading Democrat on the House Administration Committee, and Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, have argued for the Smithsonian’s independence. In a statement, they have disputed Mr. Trump’s power to fire employees of the Smithsonian, calling any such effort “illegal.”
The Smithsonian is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents, which includes three members of Congress appointed by the House and three by the Senate. Nine regents are nominated by the board and appointed for a six-year term by a joint resolution signed by the president. The vice president and chief justice of the United States also serve on the board.
Independent of any personnel maneuvers, the Smithsonian is also confronting the president’s proposed 12 percent cut to its budget. The proposed cuts were a focal point of a meeting Ms. Sajet convened on Tuesday afternoon with the National Portrait Gallery’s board of commissioners. At the meeting, Ms. Sajet depicted Mr. Trump’s decision to fire her as part of the White House’s broader efforts to target the Smithsonian.
The proposed budget cuts would affect other museums under the Smithsonian’s umbrella, such as the planned National Museum of the American Latino, she said, which would need to reduce its staff from 35 employees to about six people. The Anacostia Community Museum would completely lose its funding, she added, and its programming would be folded into the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“The big hit is to facilities,” Ms. Sajet said in a video conference call with commissioners. She explained that such budget reductions would hit the Smithsonian’s infrastructure the hardest. “That’s maintaining our museums, storage, upgrades and, you know, all the care that goes into it.”
At the meeting, Ms. Sajet indicated that she viewed her own situation as collateral damage in the president’s effort to reshape the Smithsonian. “I was just a piece of it,” she said.
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for nearly 30 years, covers arts and culture.
Graham Bowley is an investigative reporter covering the world of culture for The Times.
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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