WASHINGTON — Staff are censoring content they fear could upset President Donald Trump. Volunteers are angry and mulling quitting, even as they work for free. Employees are repeatedly warned not to talk to the press.
And the message from on high is that if you care about the Smithsonian Institution and its 17 museums in Washington, D.C., and if you care about your colleagues keeping their jobs or keeping your own, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the chilling effects of Trump’s efforts to erase art and rewrite American history in the ways that he wants.
This is how some Smithsonian workers describe their jobs lately, the result of an escalating push by Trump and the White House to control the Smithsonian, a nearly 180-year-old collection of free museums at the center of many tourists’ trips to the nation’s capital. Paranoia jumped on Tuesday, when White House officials laid out detailed plans for carrying out Trump’s wishes to eliminate exhibits featuring “improper ideology.”
If the Smithsonian doesn’t go along with the White House-directed censorship, which Trump claims is necessary to stop the “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the president is threatening to cut the Smithsonian’s federal funding, which accounts for about two-thirds of its annual revenue.
But his definition of “divisive narratives” seems to be anything related to gender or race, and his mandate has left Smithsonian workers with two terrible options: censor exhibits to Trump’s liking to keep your job and ensure your museum keeps getting federal money, or hold firm in defending history and artistic freedom knowing you could lose your job and trigger major funding cuts to a museum you care about.
“Everyone is so scared,” said one longtime Smithsonian worker who requested anonymity to protect their job.
“It’s an impossible position to put us in,” they said. “We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive. What are we supposed to do? It’s like up is down. It’s maddening.”
“We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive. What are we supposed to do?”
– longtime Smithsonian worker
Trump officials are promising on-site visits to museums and requesting materials relating to exhibits’ text, wall presentations, websites, education materials, and digital and social media in eight museums to ensure they all reflect “uplifting and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.”
“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” reads a Tuesday letter from Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought to Lonnie Bunch, the chief of the Smithsonian Institution.
Smithsonian leadership is telling employees not to put any substantive communications in writing, per one staffer, for fear of repercussions. Instead, work plans are communicated verbally, and email is reserved for benign, institution-wide messages from Bunch that are expected to be leaked to the press.
Smithsonian volunteers and employees who spoke to HuffPost on condition of anonymity said Bunch is “loved” and “respected” by many. And one of the reasons people are reluctant to push back on Trump’s revision of museum exhibits is because they want him to keep his job.
But the strategy that Smithsonian leadership seems to have adopted for preserving at least some of the institution’s artistic integrity — keep your head down, placate the White House and ride out this storm — hasn’t yielded much success.
The National Portrait Gallery, for one, just lost a show by an artist who refused to remove a painting of a transgender woman to appease Trump. The National Museum of American History last month drew condemnation for removing references to Trump’s impeachments from a display about impeached presidents, though it put them back weeks later. The National Museum of African American History and Culture came under fire in April for returning civil rights-related artifacts to owners who had not requested them back.
“They’re trying to erase history before our very eyes,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said Tuesday on social media, in response to the White House’s list of demands to Bunch.
Asked for comment, a Smithsonian Institution spokesperson said only that leadership is proud of its work and its staff.
“The Smithsonian’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and accurate, factual presentation of history, and we are proud of our hardworking staff who work to carry out that mission every day,” said the spokesperson.
Later Thursday, Trump defended his efforts to censor Smithsonian exhibits.
“We want the museums to treat our country fairly,” he said in brief remarks in the Oval Office. “We want the museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke manner, or in a racist manner, which is what many of them, not all of them, but many of them are doing.”
But Trump’s choice of Smithsonian museums to audit isn’t random, noted Savannah Romero, co-founder of the Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty Collective, a group focused on repairing the historical harms of slavery and colonialism through cultural change.
“The focus on the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Museum of American History makes the intent crystal clear: target the institutions that are bringing to light the true colonial and violent history of the United States,” Romero said in a statement.
“Museums, though imperfect and rooted in their own colonial histories, remain among our most accessible and resourced archives of public memory,” she said. “As memory scholars have long shown, control what a society remembers, and you control what it can become. This is why public trust in these institutions is so strong.”
Through clenched teeth and smiles, workers at the Portrait Gallery said they weren’t allowed to talk about changes at the gallery when HuffPost recently visited the museum. One worker, who curiously lingered after saying they couldn’t talk, quietly expressed how “scary” it is that Trump is trying to censor art he doesn’t like. A volunteer at another Smithsonian museum said workers there often air concerns privately in break rooms, and “the 1930s” is a common refrain, referring to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.
“I’m often shocked at how angry, furious, hurt, etc. volunteers have been,” said this volunteer. “Many of them are furious. All that I’ve met that volunteer there really love the Smithsonian and believe that [Trump] aims to destroy it.”
The Smithsonian worker previously mentioned in this story, meanwhile, said they’ve been reluctantly censoring content to fend off possible future attacks from Trump.
“I’m self-censoring. I’m doing it,” they said, noting they feel ashamed about it.
“This strategy of ‘don’t respond and don’t make the Smithsonian a target’ is not working,” they added. “They are coming for us.”
Censoring the arts is a move straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and it’s particularly “chilling” when museums feel pressured into self-censoring, Dr. Karrie Koesel, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, recently told HuffPost.
Koesel, an expert on authoritarianism, said it’s too soon to say how destructive to democracy the White House’s list of demands to the Smithsonian will be.
“I think it depends on the outcome for exhibits at the Smithsonian Museums; we will need to wait and see what will be excluded,” she said Wednesday. “Museums should be places of learning and exchange, not the preferences of the White House.”
HuffPost recently spent a couple of days talking to more than a dozen tourists walking around four Smithsonian museums, asking what they made of Trump’s efforts to censor exhibits relating to race, gender and American history. Many of these people were retirees, but some were younger families with kids in tow. Some voted for Trump. Some didn’t. Some wouldn’t say. None said they liked that Trump is revising museums’ exhibits.
One Smithsonian worker told HuffPost they’ve seen people cry when they view an exhibit at the National Museum of American History called “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith.”
Some visitors have asked if the exhibit can stay, because they’ve said they’re afraid American democracy itself will soon “be gone,” said this worker.
But another exhibit in this museum, called “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” seems to be the “most emotional” for visitors, they said. This is this exhibit where Trump’s two impeachments were temporarily removed, and then put back.
“People are angry,” the Smithsonian worker said. “And sad.”
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