1. 1990s: The Smithsonian goes to Congress

The 1990s was an exciting and dynamic period for the Smithsonian. Its leadership articulated a commitment to cultural pluralism that was affirmed by the passage of legislation enacting the National Museum of the American Indian in 1989 and a decision by the Board of Regents to support the establishment of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.Footnote ¹⁴ Despite this progressive outlook, the Smithsonian was simultaneously falling out of step with the world around it, which was being swept into an era of escalating history wars. The situation was enflamed by the surge in American nationalism that followed the end of the Gulf War and tensions surrounding the 1992 Columbus quincentenary.Footnote ¹⁵ Contextualized by a period agitated by social, political, and economic uncertainty, the Smithsonian became the subject of heated debate in Senate Committee on Appropriations Hearings from 1990 to 1992.

The West as America, an exhibition that grappled publicly with ideas about nationalism, storytelling and authority, quickly became a trigger point that intensified conflict between institutional confidence, sectoral best practice, political conservatism, and public culture. It displayed 164 paintings, prints, sculptures, and photographs alongside curatorial interpretations that presented them as archival or historical records rather than as images to be appreciated for their beauty alone. The exhibition’s interpretative material was, unusually for the time, given center stage, while the artworks played a supporting role. It contributed to historical and museological innovations of the day that sought to engage the audience in questions about how and why certain meanings are produced over others. Informed by “new interpretations of western art on the major new histories of the west that have emerged since the US bicentennial of 1976,” curators encouraged visitors to understand that the legends and mythologies of a national imaginary are created for reasons of political and cultural expediency.Footnote ¹⁶ The exhibition’s primary goal was to show the role that visual culture and national mythologies played in the expansion, progress, and the development of the “heroic West” archetype where US history is sanitized, one-sided, and omits the destruction of Native communities and slavery.Footnote ¹⁷ To help educators lesson plan around the complex themes of the exhibition, the museum created a teachers’ guide that explained that the exhibition “argues that this art is not an objective account of history and that art is not necessarily history; seeing is not necessarily believing.” Footnote ¹⁸

In rejecting the premise that art is universal and speaks across time, place, and cultural barriers, the exhibition’s curators, led by William Truettner, argued that mid-nineteenth century paintings of an imagined frontier revealed more about the knowledge and belief systems in place during the period of production than they did about the history they depicted.Footnote ¹⁹ It was one of the first times curatorial intentions became visible to audiences. Their approach was supported by one visitor who commented: “Good exhibit. Need lots more of this type of re-interpretation as the ‘Quincentennial’ year rolls around. A strong nation and world come only after confronting past mistakes and making amendments—and that includes re-structuring our ways of seeing.”Footnote ²⁰ Another said “I strongly encourage you to mount more exhibitions like this combining socio-political analysis with paintings. Very powerful.”Footnote ²¹ According to a third: “To be critical of our past can only help us to be better in the future. This does not make you a Bad American. Good job!”Footnote ²²

However, the curatorial preference for national reflection and critique was not appreciated by all. As one of the earliest quincentenary events, it was perceived as setting the tone for other events that would be rolled out over the next year, and became something of a test-case. Critics likened its “revisionist” approach to a left-wing ideological preference for multiculturalism that would undermine national pride, identity, and cohesion. One visitor said, “The narrative which accompanies the work of art is among the most racist, anti-white tripe I have ever seen.”Footnote ²³ Media commentators articulated outrage that the exhibition was being used by the national museum to abuse its authority to rewrite the history of western conquest to fit a newly “spun” postmodern and pluralist national storyline.Footnote ²⁴ Other visitors said there must be something to be proud of in America’s history and that the museum should focus instead on positive celebrations.Footnote ²⁵

Congress’ interest in the exhibition was initially triggered by a well-publicized comment made by Daniel Boorstin, who was at the time Librarian of Congress, University of Chicago History professor and former director of the Smithsonian’s own Museum of History and Technology. After attending the exhibition opening, he wrote on the first page of the visitor’s book that it was: “A perverse, historically inaccurate destructive exhibit! No credit to the Smithsonian!”Footnote ²⁶ It was not long before politicians took notice. The exhibition became a regular agenda item at the Senate Committee on Appropriations hearings between 1990 and 1992.Footnote ²⁷ Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams was grilled during hearings by senators, led by Ted Stevens, who demanded accountability for the institution’s use of federal funds for the purposes of producing exhibitions that challenged traditional ideas of American nationalism. The nature of their discussions are summed up by this opening comment by the committee’s chair, Harry Reid:

Secretary Adams was consistent in his assertions that the Smithsonian had an obligation to exemplify the nation’s pluralism, precisely because it was publicly funded. He had previously argued that:

Media reporting of the budget hearings generated a circus atmosphere that encouraged people to visit The West as America and write comments in the exhibition’s visitor books. Their responses represent a range of opinions and viewpoints but many reiterated Stevens’ views (even though he never personally visited the exhibition). In totality, the museum received 195 letters or visitor feedback cards about the exhibition. Those who expressly mentioned seeing the exhibition were favorable in their comments by a ratio of 3 to 1. Those who said that they had not seen the show were critical of it by a ratio of 4 to 1. More than 70 people explained that their main driver for sending opinions about the exhibition was press coverage rather than their own experience of it.Footnote ³⁰ All but 11 responses came from people living outside Washington DC. At least 50 letters were sent by people who had not seen the exhibition but were driven to complain about it anyway because they had received a letter from the Smithsonian asking them to renew their membership following negative political and media reporting. Coming on top of the media controversy about the Smithsonian’s “politically correct rewriting” of national history and Senator Stevens’ threats to reduce future appropriations, these letter writers did not appreciate this request to extend or further promote the approach taken in The West as America. Over 100 people responded to Smithsonian Secretary Adam’s ill-timed request by stating that they no longer wished to support the Smithsonian at all (Figure 2).Footnote ³²

Figure 2. Feedback card about The West as America exhibition. Smithsonian Institution Archives (author’s photograph, permission to reproduce from the Smithsonian).Footnote ³¹

No other budget hearing from recent times had registered anywhere near this level of interest in the Smithsonian.Footnote ³³ In contrast to usual hearing topics—issues related to resource management, taxation, and infrastructure problems—the themes of cultural pluralism and identity politics were a novel feature of the budget hearing held in March 1990 (for Financial Year 1991). It is unsurprising that the terminology employed by the Smithsonian Secretary at this time was more extreme and potentially antagonistic than what he subsequently employed at the next two years’ proceedings, when his words and language were as closely scrutinized as the West as America exhibition Congress was attacking.Footnote ³⁴ In the pre-West as America period, for example, Secretary Adams said that the recently legislated and yet to be built National Museum of the American Indian would be a Smithsonian museum that would, “to an unprecedented extent, ‘belong’ to Native Americans.”Footnote ³⁵ He also explained that the Smithsonian “cannot narrowly favor, idealize, or reify purported ‘mainstream’ cultures or values [because] Ours is a multiracial, pluralistic country.”Footnote ³⁶

In 1990, these comments raised no significant concerns. By the time of the hearing for the 1992 fiscal year, however, which took place two months into the West as America’s four-month run, a statement that questioned the ownership of the national past would have further exorcized senators such as Ted Stevens who warned Secretary Adams that he was “in for a battle” because the exhibition promoted “a political agenda that is not consistent with that of the United States.”Footnote ³⁷ Stevens’ understanding of political correctness came from Lynne Cheney who was then chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He reiterated Cheney’s argument that it “typically involves faculty members trying to impose their views on others” and is “a threat to the free inquiry and free expression which have made this Nation so great.”Footnote ³⁸

In the end, congressional interest in the Smithsonian subsided as quickly as it had arisen, with Senator Jake Garn—who served for a decade on the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents—cautioning the subcommittee in 1992 that those making accusations of political interference also needed to consider “the other side of the coin.” Garn reminded members that “Congress plays with the Smithsonian for their own political gains as well.”Footnote ³⁹ Concerns about political interference were also circulating throughout the media. In reporting the brouhaha, New York Times commentator Michael Kimmelman used language that would not be out of place today when he wrote that The West as America controversy, “raises questions about Government involvement in the arts. No exhibition on westward expansion could be free of political connotations of some sort.” He went on to ask: “Is it now the job of Congress to police its constituents’ thinking about the art in those museums?”Footnote ⁴⁰ The shadow of political correctness was ubiquitous throughout the quincentenary events that followed, with controversies rising to the surface on a number of occasions and high degrees of self-policing evident in curatorial decisions made by Smithsonian staff.Footnote ⁴¹ However, it was not until 1995, when an exhibition about another national anniversary (this time the 50-year anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima that ended World War II) was proposed that the Smithsonian again found itself directly back in the cross-hairs of the culture wars.Footnote ⁴²

2. 2025: Cultural institutions and the countdown to America’s 250th anniversary

Parallels between the 1990s and the current day abound. They include federal government cuts—real and threatened—to funding for the Smithsonian and other arts agencies as well as “skirmishes” on the political battlefield that the art world was—and is again—said to have become.Footnote ⁴³ A review of a Smithsonian exhibition called The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture by long-time Washington Post arts writer Philip Kennicott demonstrates some points of similarity.Footnote ⁴⁴ This exhibition, shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from November 8, 2024 to September 14, 2025, was criticized in the “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian” article for using “American sculpture to invite dialogue and reflection on notions of power and identity.”Footnote ⁴⁵ It followed the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, which singled out the same exhibition for portraying “American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”Footnote ⁴⁶

Despite its focus on sculpture rather than painting and its presentation of artworks produced over a much longer time frame (until 2023), The Shape of Power echoed some of the themes, approaches, and techniques used in The West as America. It applied to its interpretation methods a similar pedagogical approach that presented a scholarly and analytical lens to issues about the manipulation of race and ethnicity evident in discourses of American nationalism.Footnote ⁴⁷ It also included artworks produced during the nineteenth century, such as Ferdinand Pettrich’s The Dying Tecumseh (1856), that romanticized the genocidal destruction of Native Americans in the pursuit of westward expansion.Footnote ⁴⁸ Also, it attracted audience responses that express dissonance with the President’s political messaging about the exhibition. According to Kennicott, visitor reactions recorded in public comment books were overwhelmingly positive. He noted as being typical of the 2405 responses recorded in the visitor book this comment, written by a visitor called Nelson: “The repetition of it all is striking. The same tropes + visualizations of hierarchy … over + over again for centuries. No wonder we have a hard time seeing otherwise.”Footnote ⁴⁹

The disjunct between museum practice and political narratives becomes clearer yet when we compare the representational framework of The Shape of Power with a social media post by the Department of Homeland Security in September 2025. The post reproduced one of the most controversial paintings included in The West as America, a painting by John Gast (1872) called American Progress. It celebrates the nineteenth century concept of “Manifest Destiny” by showing a young white woman—a goddess-like personification of the US known as Columbia—floating westward, “enlightening” the darkened west as she symbolically clears the land for white settlers. She carries tools of progress with her (a schoolbook and an unspooled telegraph wire), while Native Americans and wild buffalo scatter into the painting’s darkened margins.Footnote ⁵⁰ The nineteenth-century concept of Manifest Destiny asserts that the US Government has a providential right to expand its territory, even against its Indigenous peoples and close neighbors. The term came back into popular use after President Trump pledged, during his 2025 inauguration speech to “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”Footnote ⁵²

The US Government’s resocialization of frontier images that have been criticized decades apart (including by The West as America and The Shape of Power) for de-politicizing the impact that westward expansion progress has had on people and communities in the nineteenth century continues to be contested. It does not seem to be a coincidence that American Progress was selected by the Department, or that it was accompanied by the deceptively simple caption: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending (Figure 3).”Footnote ⁵³ A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security responded to criticism about the post by saying that if people need “a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails and forged this republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook.”Footnote ⁵⁴ I understand this statement as providing evidence of the importance of controlling historical narratives about the nation as the semiquincentennial approaches. Given the sector’s concerns about interference that has already occurred, statements from Trump’s administration might also represent an attempt to get ahead of any controversies over political correctness and accusations of political interference that may arise from programming, for which The West as America exists as a key precedent. However, these attempts might have overshot their target because lessons from history evidence that what the government has referred to as “historical accuracy” has already been proven to be the project of rewriting national history for political purposes.Footnote ⁵⁶

Figure 3. American Progress by John Gast, 1872. Reproduced on social network X, July 24, 2025. X/ Homeland Security (screenshot).Footnote ⁵¹

3. Looking forward: Where to from here?

The day-by-day countdown clock on the official America 250 website shows that it is still many months before semiquincentennial programming is realized.Footnote ⁵⁷ However, the significance of disputes over the role of politics in culture is evidenced by the fact that despite the reappearance of the nineteenth century frontier imagery, the battle for hearts and minds—and the role that art, culture, and museums play in building our collective history lessons—remains unchanged, even decades after The West as America drew attention to its stakes. The countdown website also includes other partisan details that are unprecedented for their directness of messaging. They include the banner advising that “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government” and a parallel counter that, at the time of writing, recorded the shut-down as being up to 23 days, 17 hours, 5 minutes, and 4 seconds (Figure 4). This single image alone illustrates what an explosive phase the nation’s developers of historical programs are inhabiting. It is an image that can be contextualized historically through information about previous exhibitions such as The West as America because politicization of the Columbus anniversary also occurred primarily in the year prior to the anniversary.

Figure 4. Webpage: “Countdown to America’s 250th Anniversary” from October 25, 2025 (screenshot).Footnote ⁵⁵

Many thoughtful responses have been made about the current and previous attacks on culture by scholars working with public institutions—which, like the Smithsonian—have both official and informal restrictions around criticizing the government. They include Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jason Stanley, who recently made comments that extend the belief articulated by museum leaders in the 1970s that the past is a prologue for the future.Footnote ⁵⁸ “Knowing our history,” they suggest, “can give us the weapons and wherewithal to battle Trump’s efforts to catapult us back to a time when the majority of Americans lacked both the civic and economic power that we have now.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Their assertion is that resisting fascism requires understanding this shared and complex fractured history.

Similar views have been previously expressed by current Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch III, who is also the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch has not spoken publicly about this year’s attacks on the Smithsonian. We can, however, look to his past statements to understand his views about the role museums play in the contemporary world. In his 2019 memoir, Bunch recalled taking President Trump, on the eve of his first term, on a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He commented: “It was not my job to make the rough edges of history smooth, even for the president.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Bunch understands that museums are, at their heart, political sites—and instruments of power.Footnote ⁶¹ He also understands the impact that exhibitions have on the hundreds of thousands of visitors—some of whom go to the trouble of writing comments in visitor books—who explore Smithsonian museums each year.

In the end, museums are critical sites in debates over political culture and cultural politics. From the nineteenth century, when neoclassical public museum buildings and the artworks they reified contributed to establishing ideals of whiteness, European power and civility, through to the reimagination of these same values by exhibitions like The West as America and The Shape of Power, museums are central to our understanding of who we are—as individuals and members of a national polity—and who we can aspire to be. Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian need to be understood in this context, as being part of a long political playbook in which culture has been targeted for representing an inclusive view of the American union. However, as I have shown in this article, the Smithsonian has weathered political attacks on its exhibitions in the past. Combined with analysis of contemporary events, the lessons from history highlight the importance of protecting the Smithsonian as an independent authority that withstands political interference at all costs.