The United States National Committee of the International Council of Museums released a statement Tuesday pledging its “unwavering support” for the Smithsonian Institution, as it faces repeated assaults on its integrity and independence by the Trump administration.
In the statement, ICOM-US said that it was speaking out in response to the recent congressional hearings, in which Anthea Hartig, the director of the institution’s National Museum of American History, was grilled over allegations that the institution has failed in its duty to preserve and present the nation’s story.
While the statement stops short of rebutting the Trump administration’s claims that the Smithsonian is subject to “extreme political activism,” it more generally affirms that museums are “guided by scholarship, professional expertise, ethical practice, and intellectual integrity,” implicitly including the Smithsonian among those guided by such principles.
“We stand alongside the American Alliance of Museums in affirming the essential role museums play in American civic life and the importance of safeguarding their independence, integrity, and public trust,” the statement reads.
The reference to the AAM is to a statement made by the professional body in July that more explicitly rebuked the Trump administration’s attacks on the Smithsonian. “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,” AAM’s statement reads. “If scholarship at our nation’s leading museum system can become subject to political influence, no museum is beyond reach.”
ICOM-US’s public statement is notable given that the organization adopted a new code of ethics in June, its first revision in over 20 years. In that document, ICOM calls on museums to “resist financial or political influence” and that, “[r]egardless of funding sources or governance models, museums should maintain control of the content and integrity of their activities, exhibitions and publications.”
