On Thursday night, the White House appeared to denounce a range of artworks, shows, and objects on view at the Smithsonian Institution, continuing President Donald Trump‘s protest against the museum network.
Published on the White House website as an article called “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” the list included some shows that the President had already decried, including one about sculptures as signifiers of power at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He also once again attacked the National Museum of African American History and Culture for displays about “white dominant culture,” something he had already singled out in an executive order earlier this year.
But the list also named a number of presentations that Trump had never before referenced—one of which has never even been mounted at a Smithsonian museum.
On the list was a painting of a Black trans woman posing as the Statue of Liberty by Amy Sherald that was to appear in a National Portrait Gallery version of her traveling survey. Sherald pulled that iteration of the exhibition, alleging censorship and claiming that the museum had asked her not to show this painting, which had already appeared in the Whitney Museum edition of the exhibition.
In some cases, Trump named specific artworks that he seemed to say were objectionable. One was Rigoberto A. González’s 2022 painting Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas, which was a finalist in a portraiture competition run by the National Portrait Gallery the year it was produced. A White House–run account posted a picture of the work to X on Thursday, writing, “This is what President Trump means when he says the Smithsonian is ‘OUT OF CONTROL.’”
The National Portrait Gallery was also denounced for commissioning a stop-motion portrait of Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and who has frequently been protested by Trump for his response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Also on the list was a papier-mâché Statue of Liberty that features Lady Liberty holding a tomato instead of a torch. The sculpture was used by protesters during a workers’ rights protest in Immokalee, Florida, in 2000, and is now in the collection of the National American History Museum.
The list included some presentations that were no longer on view, including a 2023 National Museum of African Art show that centered around the kingdom of Drexciya. Just like all the other bullet points on the list, the White House’s citation for that show did not detail why Trump had objected to it, instead relying largely on quotations from the Smithsonian site.
The Trump administration also targeted the wall texts used by Smithsonian institutions such as the National Museum of the American Latino, whose descriptions for exhibits about the Black Lives Matter movement, disabled Latinos and Latinas, immigration, and colonization were mentioned on the list. The White House’s list claimed that this museum views the history it surveys as being fundamentally about “centuries of victimhood and exploitation.” Trump also objected to the terminology used in the National American History Museum’s “LGBTQ+ History” display.
It was the second time this week that the Trump administration condemned the Smithsonian.
Earlier this week, in a post on his platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that, at the Smithsonian, “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”
Trump had previously called for a review of the Smithsonian’s offerings, and the Smithsonian had previously said it would itself assess what was on view. But the Smithsonian has also previously affirmed its independence from the administration. (While Trump is not on its board, J. D. Vance, the vice president, is on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, as has long been the case for vice presidents.) Many have questioned whether Trump has the legal authority required to make changes to Smithsonian museums.
He previously said he fired Kim Sajet, who was at the time the director of the National Portrait Gallery. After Trump posted that he ousted her on Truth Social, Sajet continued to report to work anyway. Ultimately, she resigned from her post.
