Trump wants museums to convey America’s greatness’ from now on

National American museums also fall prey to the Trump revolution. The famous Smithsonian Institute in Washington, which manages monumental museums, has to deal with all « narratives representing American and Western values ​​such as inherently harmful and oppressive. » It has to propagate America’s « greatness. »

Trump has determined this in a new decree for the ‘restoring truth and common sense in American historiography’. Institutions of the Smithsonians must emphasize the great performance of the American people.

Vice-President Vance, member of the board of the Institute, is instructed to get started. He has to investigate all Smithsonian locations to prevent projects and exhibitions that « reduce American values ».

According to Trump, the Smithsonian has become infected with a « ras -based ideology » that portrays America as « essential racist, sexist, oppressive or otherwise irreparably manked. » According to him, that national self -chastisement is at the expense of the « unparalleled » successes that the country achieved in « the spread of freedom, individual rights and human happiness. »

Financial

The Smithsonian, founded in 1846 from the legacy of the English chemist James Smithson (1765-1829), is one of the most important museum organizations in the world. The more than twenty prominent American museums and other institutions of the Institute attracted nearly seventeen million visitors from the US and abroad in 2024. Many of them, including the National Aviation Museum, the Museum of Natural History and also the National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004, are located at The Mall in the center of Washington.

Trump cannot intervene directly in the course of the institute, but it can exert great financial pressure. The Smithsonian has a budget of a billion dollars, for more than half from the federal government. The institute is led by a mixed administration of Republicans and Democrats and is supervised by the congress. With the congress controlled by Republicans, now is now responsible for the screening of the institute.

Scientists and democratic politicians have shocked and reacted indignantly to the decree. They see it as an attempt to erase the role of racism and violence in national history and the contribution of non-white amerkanas and replace it with a ‘purified’ patriotic myth.

Trump seems to have it mainly at the National Museum of African-American history, which, according to him, dismisses « individualism, hard work and the nuclear family » as « white culture. » He also criticizes the Museum of American Arts that « the idea promotes that race is not a biological fact but a social construct. »

Cultural Revolution

Trumps Decree on the Smithsonian is a new step in his cultural revolution, in addition to the ongoing attack at universities and his takeover of the prestigious Kennedy Center in New York, where he appointed himself as chairman.

American museums have started to give more room to the perspective of women, black and indigenous Americans in recent decades. Slavery and the submission of indigenous peoples are also discussed in monuments such as the Monticello country house by Thomas Jefferson and National Parks.

Trump also wants the Ministry of the Interior to check or since 2020 – the year of the lost elections he claims to have won – controversial statues and other monuments have been removed « to give a wrong representation of history ».

A debate has been raging about this for years. Anti-racism activists insist on removing statues from southern politicians and generals from the civil war (1851-1865). Such statues were often founded only half a century after the war to confirm white supremacy. A statue of General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, was deployed in 2017, in which a demonstrator was killed by a neo -Nazi.

Trump, then in his first term, saw « good people on both sides. » The equestrian statue was removed by the city in 2021 and was melted down two years later.

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