All posts tagged: Smithsonian

Signs to Be Installed Outside Smithsonian Warning of Political Bias

Signs to Be Installed Outside Smithsonian Warning of Political Bias

Published by Jenni Sidey

President Donald Trump escalated his battle with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Friday, ordering signage outside the institution to flag what an executive order calls “inaccurate information” presented in its exhibits. The extraordinary directive comes amid intensifying Republican scrutiny of the Smithsonian branch, which was the subject of a recent 162-page report accusing its director, Anthea M. Hartig, of replacing “historical education” with “extreme political activism.” According to the order, the signage will tell visitors that the museum’s exhibits “should be renovated” to align with the report and direct them to locations where, in the administration’s view, American history is more accurately reflected. The administration did not specify which locations the signage would direct visitors to. Related Articles Trump’s order comes only days after Hartig faced two congressional hearings over alleged political bias in her museum’s curation and questions about her loyalty to the United States. Hartig, an explicit target of the White House report, rejected its central claims, defending the museum’s scholarship as “rigorous” and “fact-based” and saying it aims to tell …

Trump’s Smithsonian Trigger Warnings – The Atlantic

Trump’s Smithsonian Trigger Warnings – The Atlantic

Published by Daniella Wilson

Incensed by the Smithsonian but lacking immediate power to do anything about it, Donald Trump has resorted to trolling the world’s largest museum complex from the sidewalk. In an executive order posted this afternoon, the president directed the Department of the Interior to place signs outside the National Museum of American History warning passersby about “ideological capture” and detailing the findings of his administration’s recent, quickly contested report on the museum. The order comes days after the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, was grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The warnings, the order says, will direct visitors to “locations and resources for accurate information” about American history and will notify them that exhibits “should be renovated consistent with the findings of the Report.” It asserts that the “current leadership of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.” Having determined, perhaps, that the museum’s 250-object exhibit “exploring the ideals of the Declaration of Independence” is not enough, Trump also ordered the Department of the Interior to …

Trump orders signage warning visitors of ‘inaccurate information’ at Smithsonian

Trump orders signage warning visitors of ‘inaccurate information’ at Smithsonian

Published by Sam Flores

While he continues to seek control of the exhibits inside the Smithsonian Institution’s museums, President Donald Trump is trying a new tactic in the front yard. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. The president on Friday ordered that “warning” signs be placed in front of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to inform visitors of the “inaccurate information presented in the Museum.” The executive order comes after a White House report released July 4 claimed the museum “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.” Trump said in March 2025 that he intended to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution, signing an executive order that sought to target federal funding for programs that present “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.” In his order on Friday, Trump wrote that the “Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as …

Morning Links for July 23, 2026

Morning Links for July 23, 2026

Published by Jenni Sidey

Good Morning! Vanderbilt University to keep art at the heart of the former California College of the Arts campus after a $75 million gift from Jensen and Lori Huang. A new study argues that art-world inequality is shaped by institutional networks, not just representation. Ex-Dia director Jessica Morgan is taking a $500,000 pay cut to take the reins at London’s Tate.  The Headlines CCA HUANGING ON. Nvidia founder Jensen Huang is making waves in the art world. Just days after Sotheby’s sold his beloved leather jacket for nearly $1 million, Vanderbilt University has unveiled plans to keep art and design at the heart of the former California College of the Arts campus, following a $75 million donation from Huang and his wife, Lori. The Art Newspaper reports that the university will open the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture, and Design in San Francisco in 2027, while preserving CCA’s archives and continuing its programs through a new institute. The move comes after CCA announced it would close amid declining enrollment and a $20 million deficit. The takeover offers a lifeline …

Republicans want a Smithsonian that skips history’s hard parts

Republicans want a Smithsonian that skips history’s hard parts

Published by Sam Flores

Your chances of running into a marketer at a neighborhood bar are slim but never zero. Given the remote-capable nature of the work and the continued growth of their economic sector, marketers have spread across the U.S., making the most of their relatively high salaries by moving away from the more expensive coastal centers of industry. By and large, they’re lovely people. But I live in fear of the moment when the conversation takes that dreaded turn toward the last redoubt of small talk: What do you do? Posed with that question, any halfway enthusiastic marketer is likely to let loose a litany of acronyms and jargon that cause a physiological response in listeners, or at least in me — a glazing over of the eyes that is instant and unavoidable. As with Microsoft Outlook, the board game CATAN and the rules of hurling, there’s something there I can’t bring myself to grasp, a Lovecraftian boredom that lies just beyond the borders of what I can perceive.    I’m not one of those rubes who thinks …

Republicans in House DOGE subcommittee excoriate a Smithsonian administrator : NPR

Republicans in House DOGE subcommittee excoriate a Smithsonian administrator : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, appears in front of the House DOGE subcommittee on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Andrew Harnik/Getty Images In a subcommittee hearing Tuesday, House Republicans sharply questioned the director of the National Museum of American History, Anthea Hartig. The GOP lawmakers’ comments closely mirrored Trump administration’s criticisms of the institution she leads as insufficiently patriotic. The hearing was held by the House’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, a branch of DOGE that is chaired by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn). In his opening remarks, Burchett said: “I feel like [the Smithsonian]’s become infected by a woke ideology that seeped into public displays, educational materials and planning documents. The American story is the birth and growth of a great nation founded on powerful ideals and which we aim to fully achieve. But in the museum’s current telling, history is just an ongoing power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.” In a 162-page report issued on July 4, the White House Domestic …

Smithsonian Museum Leader Grilled at Congressional Hearing

Smithsonian Museum Leader Grilled at Congressional Hearing

Published by Jenni Sidey

“Dr. Hartig, are you America first? Do you love America?” So asked Representative Tim Burchett (Republican of Tennessee) of Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH), during a two-hour congressional hearing Tuesday over allegations that the institution has failed in its duty to preserve and present the nation’s story. The hearing will likely carve out its own place in American history—not merely for the spectacle of the proceedings, which included questions like “When did you know you were a woman?” and “Was Mickey Mouse racist?” but for the ideological conflict at its core, one that prompted repeated comparisons to McCarthyism and the era’s House Committee on Un-American Activities: Who draws the line between history and propaganda? How does changing what a nation remembers change the nation itself?  Related Articles The witness lineup itself reflected the stakes of that debate: Hartig, who has led the NMAH since 2019; David Blight, a Yale historian and leading scholar of American historical memory; Matthew Spalding of conservative Christian college Hillsdale; and Mike Gonzalez, a …

How the Smithsonian Could Fall

How the Smithsonian Could Fall

Published by Sam Flores

The Trump administration wants to control the Smithsonian, but it won’t be so easy. When experts talk about the institution’s relationship to the federal government, the world’s largest museum complex can start to sound like a bureaucratic outcast. The Office of Legal Counsel has called the Smithsonian a “very unusual entity” and a “historical and legal anomaly.” A law-journal article describes it as “Quasi-Government at the Private Border.” One attorney told me that it resides in the legal “netherworld.” The Smithsonian may occupy the governmental fringes, but its museums are hardly invisible to Americans, millions of whom visit them each year. With the Trump administration renewing its efforts to crack down on the institution in recent weeks, though, overlooked legal mechanisms and obscure funding pipelines have suddenly become crucial variables that could affect whether the Smithsonian’s independence crumbles or holds. In a 162-page report published on July 4, the White House’s Domestic Policy Council claimed that the National Museum of American History has “failed to tell America’s story and adheres to a radical, activist ideology”; …

White House Claims Smithsonian ‘Erases’ Heritage—and More Art News

White House Claims Smithsonian ‘Erases’ Heritage—and More Art News

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Headlines HISTORY WILL TELL? On July 4, as Americans celebrated the nation’s 250th anniversary, the White House published a scathing attack on the Smithsonian Institution, in particular its National Museum of American History, reports the New York Times. Titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” the 162-page report by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, led by Vince Haley, formally accuses the institution of bias. The Smithsonian Institution “has not met its obligations to the American People,” states the report, adding that National Museum of American History director Anthea Hartig promotes “an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.” The document alleges the history museum puts a suspicious spin on “traditional patriotic narratives,” while endorsing illegal immigration and transgender issues, as well as portraying Christianity as “an instrument of conquest, exclusion or cultural erasure.” Additionally, the report argues America’s founding fathers are neglected in programming, which focuses instead on their connections to slavery, while fronting a US historical narrative characterized by “regret, tragedy and shame.” Related Articles PAPER PROJECTS. Early …

Refik Anadol to Stage Monumental AI Installation on Smithsonian Castle in DC

Refik Anadol to Stage Monumental AI Installation on Smithsonian Castle in DC

Published by Jenni Sidey

Fresh off the opening of Dataland, Refik Anadol‘s new AI art museum in Los Angeles, the media artist has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution for a new monumental installation. Dubbed Smithsonian Dreams, the new project will see Anadol transform the Smithsonian Castle, the headquarters of the Institution on the National Mall, with an immersive performance of light, sound, and visuals on July 17 and July 18 at 9 p.m.. For the work, Anadol built a custom AI system that reinterprets 200 years of Smithsonian collections and research, amounting to millions of digitized specimens, manuscripts, photographs, artworks, objects, and scientific records. The data is then turned to a projection on the Castle’s facade through a custom visualization system using a UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) algorithm. Related Articles If all this is sounding a bit familiar, that’s because Anadol’s most well known work, Unsupervised, which was shown in the Museum of Modern Art’s lobby for nearly a year, similarly ingested a museum’s collection and then spit out a transformed visualization through a UMAP algorithm. Curatorial …