‘America’s Attic” is about to get a thorough dusting.
On Tuesday, the White House sent a letter to the head of the Smithsonian Institution announcing that it will conduct an extensive review of museum content. Spanning everything from exhibition text to museum websites, the audit seeks to align with President Trump’s effort “to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” If the administration holds to that worthy aim, it can help restore the Smithsonian to its statutory purpose — the “increase and diffusion of knowledge,” rather than of ideology and historical revisionism.
As the woke tide steadily rose in the 2010s and early 2020s, the Smithsonian began infusing many exhibits with a palpable disdain for Western civilization and the American experiment it produced. The Smithsonian’s museums have increasingly promoted the idea that the nation’s story is, fundamentally, one of systemic oppression and racial victimization. Injustice began to be treated as a defining trait of America’s character, not just a facet of its history.
President Trump cited a few examples in a March executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The Smithsonian American Art Museum features an exhibit that “examines the role of sculpture in understanding and constructing the concept of race” in America. In 2020, the National Museum of African American History and Culture proclaimed, in an online portal meant to provide guidelines for discussing race, that hard work, individualism, and the nuclear family were among the “aspects and assumptions of whiteness.”
This sort of nonsense is pervasive at the Smithsonian. An exhibition affiliated with the forthcoming Museum of the American Latino, shown temporarily at the Museum of American History, contained section after section on white colonization and racism. The future American Women’s History Museum — the new museums check all the identity-politics boxes — plans to feature biological men who identify as transgender. Multiple items at the National Museum of African American History and Culture glorify the Marxist activist Angela Davis. Need we go on?
The White House says that it wants to refocus the Smithsonian on Americanism — “the people, principles, and progress that define our nation.” Indeed, America’s national museums should reflect a consensus history and uphold what makes this country distinctive and great. A fine opportunity to do so, as the Trump directive notes, is the country’s 250th birthday next year, which the Smithsonian is already planning to commemorate with new programs and exhibitions. It is reasonable to expect that these will celebrate, not denigrate, the American founding.
While reviewing the Smithsonian’s content for distortions, the administration should be careful to avoid a kind of reverse political correctness that scrubs any account of the nation’s sins. Moral stains like slavery and segregation are integral to American history, and their painful realities should be presented in full. But the museums should, obviously, also showcase the tremendous sacrifices that millions of Americans made to defeat such injustices, often by applying our founding ideals more fully. Trump should refrain, as well, from erasing any aspect of history he personally dislikes, such as his impeachment trials. The goal should be to minimize the influence of ideology at the Smithsonian, not replace one strain of politicized content with another.
At the same time, progressive accusations that Trump’s review of the Smithsonian amounts to fascism are preposterous. David Axelrod says that the content review feels like a “Stalinist” effort to “take over cultural institutions and historical institutions” and “rewrite history.” But the 21 museums in D.C. are not our sole authority on history, and Trump is not “taking over” anything. Although it exists outside the executive branch, the Smithsonian was created by Congress and is funded by taxpayers. To argue that the Smithsonian cannot be held politically accountable for its decisions is absurd.
For years, America’s national museums have been captured by a niche ideological faction that believes that Western civilization, and, indeed, our nation, is irredeemable. If the White House gets this review right, it can help make the Smithsonian a cultural gem that all Americans can once again take pride in.