As Trump Targets the Smithsonian, Museums Across the U.S. Feel a Chill
Posted on: Aug 23, 2025 14:30 IST | Posted by: Nytimes
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Some museums ar ever-changing or canceling exhibits, especially those that affect artworks that wage with gender, sexuality and race.
Zachary Small spent months speaking to artists and curators around the country to understand the scale of change in museum programming.
The artist Amy Sherald canceled her fall blockbuster show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery over concerns about whether or how the museum would display her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art abruptly postponed an exhibition of L.G.B.T.Q. Artists this spring that was already partly installed, citing fund-raising issues.
And the Trump White House called this month for a review of all current and future exhibitions at eight of the Smithsonian’s museums, including several of its major art museums, to assess their “alignment with American ideals.”
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” President Trump wrote online this week before the White House released its own list of museum programming it considered objectionable.
Trump said he had told his lawyers “to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities.” There, his administration sought changes by threatening funding cuts and in some cases threatening their tax-exempt status.
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