Label by label, on paintings, monuments and historical treasures, the Trump administration is trying to impose a new portrait of America that is without flaw and without internal debate. It’s happening at the Liberty Bell and the giant redwoods of Muir Woods, and especially in the halls of the Smithsonian Institution, the nation’s semiofficial collection of museums, which is allowing Trumpian history to supersede the accuracy of scholarship.
Last month a label that mentioned that President Trump had been impeached twice disappeared from an exhibit on the presidency at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton are still included, but an important part of modern political history was neatly redacted from the version millions of visitors to Washington would see. After an outcry, the museum said on Saturday that it would restore the information “in the coming weeks” and insisted that the Trump administration never asked for its removal.
The White House has already established a pattern of trying to intimidate the Smithsonian and other institutions into altering their cultural content to match its ideology. The Trump administration, in fact, has made an aggressive effort to rewrite not only its own history but also that of the United States, especially as it is documented in its official museums and cultural artifacts. In this new narrative, there can be no arguments about oppression by race or gender or ethnicity or sexuality or economic class, the administration implies, because no such oppression will be acknowledged in the official history, which can only be uplifting. For Mr. Trump, denying entire chapters of American history is as easy as denying last month’s jobs numbers, and it is no less dangerous to the nation’s understanding of itself.
Frustrated that he cannot control it directly, Mr. Trump has become fixated on the Smithsonian, knowing that it plays an outsize role as the nation’s government-funded storyteller. In March he signed an executive order accusing the institution of coming under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology” that portrays American values as harmful and oppressive. The order specifically criticized an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that included an unimpeachable statement that race has been used “to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege and disenfranchisement.” In June he managed to pressure Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, into stepping down after criticizing her support for racial and gender equality.
The Smithsonian said the references to the Trump impeachments were removed as part of a review of the institution’s content for bias, and The Washington Post reported this review began after Mr. Trump claimed he fired Ms. Sajet. It’s not clear yet how widespread this review will be, but already one prominent artist has refused to exhibit her works at the Portrait Gallery after it balked at showing one of her paintings. Amy Sherald, who painted the widely popular official portrait of Michelle Obama in 2018, said last month she was withdrawing her solo show from the Portrait Gallery because the museum was considering excluding her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid offending Mr. Trump.
Lindsey Halligan, a special assistant to the president whose portfolio includes the Smithsonian, accused the artist of trying “to reinterpret one of our nation’s most sacred symbols through a divisive and ideological lens.” (Did we really need another sign that the administration never understood the true message of the Statue of Liberty?)
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