On July 4 the White House published a report indicting the Smithsonian’s American History museum for devoting too much space to depicting African American, Native American, and immigrant stories and not enough space to honoring the “Founders” of the United States. Yesterday the president ordered signs placed outside the museum warning visitors that the exhibits in the museum were dangerously misleading. The president’s Executive Order said “that current leadership of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.”
The National Park Service, which administers the land outside the museum, “shall install temporary signage along the NPS-maintained sidewalks and walkways used by the public to access the Museum, informing visitors of the findings of the Report and of the policy set forth in section 1 of this order. Such signage shall notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings in the Report and direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history,” according to the Executive Order.
The president also makes as his particular target the honoring of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The order says that:
“Because the Museum has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country, the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the NPS and in coordination with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, shall install temporary exhibits or signage on NPS-maintained sidewalks, walkways, and land used by the public that corrects inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”
While the Smithsonian has won numerous awards for its exhibits on American history, the Executive Order claims 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 a “prime tool” to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”
Earlier in the week, the House held hearing on the Smithsonian at which Republican Congresspeople accused the museum’s head, Anthea M. Hartig, of encouraging American “self-loathing.”
Historians were quick to respond to the growing attack on the Smithsonian. According to the Washington Post:
Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the plan to station government material outside the museum was “an absolute affront to the professionals who work in that building” and likened the signage to issuing a trigger warning to visitors before they encounter exhibits such as the Star-Spangled Banner.
“There’s no precedent for this,” Weicksel said. She noted that the Smithsonian has weathered exhibit controversies before — most famously over its presentation of the Enola Gay and the bombing of Japan — but said the executive branch had never before sought “to present a completely alternative narrative” to the one told inside the national museum.
The report and order rested on “a very narrow and very circumscribed definition of patriotism,” Weicksel added, one at odds with the founding generation the administration invokes. The nation’s founders, she said, understood that “one’s love of nation is tied to recognizing where it has gone wrong, where it can do better.”
Her deepest worry, she said, was that the campaign would erode public trust in an institution that teachers and researchers have relied on for more than 150 years.
“The White House is essentially telling the American public not to trust the Smithsonian Institution,” she said.
