‘Quite the escalation’: Three takes on the Smithsonian battles

Earlier this month, the White House released a report claiming that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History “has abandoned historical scholarship for political activism.” Last week, the battle intensified: first, with a congressional hearing featuring the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, and then with President Donald Trump ordering signs to be placed outside the building warning visitors of inaccuracies. I spoke with my colleagues Jim Geraghty and Theodore R. Johnson to find out how they’re thinking about the conflict. — James Hohmann

James Hohmann: Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today.

The White House said this month that the National Museum of American History has veered toward “extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit, and discourage Americans.” This obviously comes across as wild hyperbole to anyone who has actually visited, but is there substance to their underlying critique?

Jim Geraghty: If you put together a 162-page report about all the terrible things the Smithsonian is supposedly doing, you’re going to run across a fair gripe or two. Back in 2020, the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s website featured a graphic declaring hard work and rational thought as traits of White culture. That’s absurd — and insulting to minorities! — and while the museum apologized shortly thereafter, it can expect to take some lumps from Congress over things like this.

Raise your hand if you knew that seven years ago, the National Museum of American History featured an “S&M harness that was worn by a gay activist at several recent San Francisco Pride marches,” as the Post reported at the time. Hey, could the story of gay and lesbian Americans adequately be told without that particular artifact?

Theodore R. Johnson: Political activism isn’t the issue. The civil rights movement, suffragists, abolitionists, the country’s founding — all were acts of political activism. The issue is whose version of national history is accepted — whose becomes the standard? In the contest to shape a nation’s narrative and mythology, accusations of inaccuracy and extremism will always surface.

Hohmann: Well said, Ted. The history wars aren’t new. Sometimes conversations around Trump seem to lack any memories from before 2015. It was very formative for me to watch the Enola Gay fight in 1995, when the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum planned contextual displays around the World War II plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In that case, the Smithsonian caved to pressure from veterans and canceled the exhibition. In this case, it has mostly resisted Trump’s pressure and threats to its independence.

But I am sympathetic to the argument that most of the museum’s budget is tax dollars. How much of a role should the federal government play in the Smithsonian? It’s important to empower professional historians, but does the telling of history need to be more democratically accountable?

Geraghty: Considering our intensely polarized times, I think a lot of Americans would want politicians kept far away from decisions about exhibitions in the Smithsonian. I’m no more enamored with the notion of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) meddling with the museum than with that of Trump.

But there is a catch — that free admission is enabled by roughly $1 billion in federal funding. So the museum is accountable to Congress, which appropriates the funds, and that means getting called up in front of Congress, as happened last week, and getting yelled at for exhibits that leaned too far one way or another.

Johnson: Poll after poll confirms that Americans are not afraid of the nation’s history; they want it to be taught in full. The fights are often over who is blamed for what went wrong and who receives credit for what went right.

The government absolutely has a responsibility to chronicle U.S. history. And when done well, history reveals the times and places the nation has fallen short.

Hohmann: I have heard from foreign friends who have visited that they’re surprised by how critical the Smithsonian museums are of the U.S. But that’s part of what makes America special. You cannot find accurate historical museums in Russia. And hagiography is the norm, even in other Western countries.

Johnson: Trump has a taste for the gilded. It seems to me that he isn’t a fan of the Smithsonian or even American history — he likes the gold-plated version, the one easily polished for display that hides its actual character.

Hohmann: Trump escalated the fight last Friday by ordering signage in front of the American history museum saying visitors cannot trust the exhibits inside. Ted, Jim, how does this battle end?

Johnson: Ending with a whimper is more likely than with a bang. As with George Washington’s house in Philadelphia, where National Park Service staff removed an exhibit on slavery in January, the opening gambit gets more attention than what follows.

Geraghty: Like a dog marking his territory, Trump is using every power of the executive branch to leave his mark on Washington, from the White House ballroom to trying to add his name to the Kennedy Center to the Reflecting Pool to the proposed triumphal arch. The signs are more of the same. Someday, there will be a court order, or another Democratic president, and the Trump marks will be removed.