MAGA Comes for Smithsonian, After Years of Woke Shows

With 17 museums, a garden, the Archives of American Art, and a zoo, the Smithsonian is sprawling, eclectic, and in President Trump’s line of fire. His freshly minted executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” correctly states that there’s “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” That would be the 1619 Project and its many spinoffs. The EO, issued last week, prohibits, among other things, Smithsonian spending on exhibitions and programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law or policies.”

I can list a hundred reasons why the Smithsonian is stuck in a rut dividing Americans between oppressors and the oppressed. Here are a few.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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With 17 museums, a garden, the Archives of American Art, and a zoo, the Smithsonian is sprawling, eclectic, and in President Trump’s line of fire. His freshly minted executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” correctly states that there’s “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” That would be the 1619 Project and its many spinoffs. The EO, issued last week, prohibits, among other things, Smithsonian spending on exhibitions and programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law or policies.”

I can list a hundred reasons why the Smithsonian is stuck in a rut dividing Americans between oppressors and the oppressed. Here are a few.