The White House has continued to escalate its assault on the Smithsonian Institution this week, ordering signage outside the National Museum of American History to flag what an executive order calls “inaccurate information” presented in its exhibits. A prominent industry group, the American Alliance of Museums, is finally hitting back.
Earlier this month, the AAM released a statement condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on the Smithsonian. In a scathing rebuke, the group asserted that the Smithsonian “reflects the highest standards of scholarship, stewardship, and public service.”
The AAM’s statement continues, “Efforts to politicize how museums present history, art, science, culture, and the natural world—and personal attacks on the museum professionals who carry out that work—threaten the integrity and independence of museums across the country. If scholarship at our nation’s leading museum system can become subject to political influence, no museum is beyond reach. The precedent would jeopardize the independence of 22,000 museums of every size and discipline across the country.”
On Tuesday, the equivalent group in the UK, the Museums Association, republished the AAM’s response to the White House.
It has been a tumultuous month for the Smithsonian, to say the least. On July 4, the White House released a 162-page report from the Domestic Policy Council detailing supposed “ideological capture” at the NMAH. Several days later, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III refuted the report’s findings in a terse email to staff. Then, on July 21, Anthea Hartig, director of the NMAH, was grilled in a two-hour congressional hearing over allegations that the institution has failed in its duty to preserve and present the nation’s story.
What exactly the Trump administration’s endgame is here remains unclear: Is it seeking Bunch’s resignation? A wholesale rewriting of curation and materials at Smithsonian institutions? Or simply to grandstand about “cultural Marxism,” or whatever the conservative buzzword du jour is? Your guess is as good as ours.
