Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was created, in the words of its benefactor and namesake, British scientist James Smithson, “for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men.” Today, its 21 museums in Washington, DC, and more than 200 affiliates across the United States have lived up to that mandate by preserving and circulating knowledge through an extraordinary collection of 157 million objects. Yet the work of preserving and sharing knowledge — never a neutral undertaking — has also made these museums arenas for debate, disagreement, and controversy, as any vital cultural institution inevitably becomes.
As John E. Simmons writes in Museums: A History (2022), museums have “evolved to become institutions in which objects and learning are associated to help human beings understand the world around them.” Over time, they have certainly supported official narratives and amplified governments, but in a country that is ostensibly democratic, the Smithsonian has also reflected a different tradition: one shaped by expertise rather than politics. That balance has helped define the institution throughout much of its history.
Still, the Smithsonian has not been free from disputes, especially amid the recent tensions of the Culture Wars. In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s The West as America, Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 was attacked by right-wing critics as anti-American. Four years later, an exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which included the actual Enola Gay B-29 bomber, faced backlash from veterans’ groups.
Then in 2010, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery drew condemnation from conservatives, who labeled it “anti-Christian” over a video work that included 10 seconds of ants crawling on a crucifix. Each episode followed a familiar pattern: Republican politicians threatened federal funding, reactionary commentators inflamed the controversy, and public arguments broke out over the museum’s proper role. To different degrees, those reactions — and the reactions to them — have become part of the democratic discourse these institutions inevitably generate, even as the exhibitions themselves fulfilled Smithson’s original aim.
Last Friday, however, the conflict took a darker turn when the Trump administration issued an executive order titled “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution.” The order assigns the Secretary of the Interior, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Administrator of General Services, and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy the task of placing “temporary signage along the [National Park Service]-maintained sidewalks and walkways used by the public to access the [National Museum of American History],” warning visitors about what it calls “Ideological Capture.”
