Smithsonian to conduct wide content review requested by Trump

US President Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance want to eliminate ‘improper, divisive or anti-American ideology’ from the Smithsonian museum.

Lonnie Bunch, Smithsonian secretary, in the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. Picture: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The Smithsonian is conducting a thorough review of all of its content in its 21 museums and zoo to eliminate political influence and bias, a move that could have far-reaching consequences for the nation’s flagship art and research institution.

The decision by the Smithsonian’s controlling body, the Board of Regents, in a closed-door meeting earlier this month, summarised in a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows how US President Donald Trump’s influence on the nation’s museums is already taking hold. He issued an executive order in March calling to eliminate “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology”, and to remove “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”.

“The board directed the secretary (of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch) to assess content in museums and make needed changes to ensure unbiased content, including personnel changes,” a Smithsonian spokesman said. “The board requested that the secretary report back on progress and suggested next steps.”

A major source of tension has been the fate of National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet, who Trump tried to fire via a Truth Social post, though he doesn’t have the authority to do so. The Smithsonian said in a statement on June 9 after the meeting that it retained power over personnel decisions. A person familiar with the meeting said no decisions have been made about Sajet.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The content review is a victory for the White House as Trump extends his reach to the country’s cultural institutions. Trump has also set out to change universities. The recent meeting was the first quarterly meeting of the board since Trump issued the executive order. There was at times tension between longstanding board members and Vice-President JD Vance and Florida Republican congressman Carlos Giménez, both of whom are new to the board. The two pushed the White House to make an expeditious cultural review, while the board wanted to give Bunch three months, Giménez said in an interview with the Journal.

The motion that was adopted by the board didn’t set out a timeline, but Giménez said he thinks it will be completed quickly. While such meetings are usually perfunctory, Trump and Republicans have taken a particular interest in removing what the President calls “woke ideology” from museums. The order instructs the Smithsonian to focus on promoting “American greatness”.

Longstanding board members got some concessions. “I started out being aggressive, but (Vance) saw that the room wasn’t there and he tried to find a middle ground and he softened my stance,” Giménez said. “In the end, the board decided to be a little softer than what he wanted.” A spokeswoman for Vance declined to comment.

On May 30 Trump announced on Truth Social that he was firing Sajet, alleging that she is “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), which is totally inappropriate for her position”. Sajet has taken pride in diversifying the museum she oversees, saying in 2022 that she wants to make it less about “the wealthy, the pale and the male”. Sajet has continued to work in her position since Trump’s post, and a removal would have to come from the board.

Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Picture: Smithsonian, John Burfitt.

The conflict is part of a broader upheaval of the nation’s renowned museum and research complex desired by conservatives. Trump’s budget would cut federal funding for the Smithsonian and eliminate funding for the still-in-planning National Museum of the American Latino, which congress has approved.

Key on the list for conservatives such as Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped write Project 2025, a Republican policy agenda, is the removal of Bunch as head of the museums. In 2005, Bunch became the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, essentially building the museum from scratch.

“Lonnie Bunch is the wrong man at the wrong time,” Gonzalez said. Critics point to Bunch’s leadership of the Smithsonian through racial unrest in 2020 and exhibits that have addressed topics such as systemic racism, or “internalised aspects of white culture” – including a graphic that was once on the Smithsonian’s website but was later removed.

Bunch criticised Trump in his book, A Fool’s Errand: creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, published in 2019, detailing a tour he gave Trump of the museum, where he discussed the slave trade, and Trump brought up how popular he was in the Netherlands.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Additional reporting by Katy Stech Ferek and Annie Linskey