The September 2026 removal of a sculpture from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., has prompted criticism.
The move is understood by arts activists as reflecting United States President Donald Trump’s wider efforts to appropriate and rebrand the Center and curtail modern styles at federal facilities.
The Associated Press reports that a “Trump-aligned board” at the Center is fighting in court for the right to put Trump’s name on the historic institution.
Trump took aim at “modernist” architecture and promoted “traditional” and “classical” structures in two executive orders issued in 2020 and 2025.
The group Hands Off the Arts, described the decision to remove artist Joel Shapiro’s sculpture Blue as “authoritarian” and as an act of “vandalism.”
The large blue geometric sculpture playfully evoked the human form in motion. Born in 1941, the late Shapiro was known for bridging modernism and postmodernism with sculptures that combined minimalist abstraction with figuration and movement.
In addition to the Kennedy Center, Trump has sought to transform Washington D.C. in other ways.
His demolition of the East Wing of the White House, repainting of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and plans to build a new triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery have all raised questions about legal and regulatory limits on presidential actions impacting cultural heritage.
Read more: Trump wants an ‘Independence Arch’ — How famous arches warn about dangers to republics
Outside of Washington D.C., work on the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico has damaged and continues to threaten Indigenous archaeological and sacred sites.
Trump’s attempts to dismantle, politicize and take over public institutions for arts and learning have been well documented.
Such attacks on cultural heritage in the U.S. are not unique. In recent years, several governments have placed at risk the very heritage they are charged to protect.
Cultural policy and state control
International law places primary responsibility for protecting cultural heritage on states.
The U.S. proposed the World Heritage Convention to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1972 and was the first state to ratify it.
According to the convention, each state party to it “recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage … belongs primarily to that State.”
But recent research suggests attacks on cultural heritage and institutions are sometimes part of democratic backsliding and broader strategies to normalize political corruption and institute authoritarian policies.
Trump and his administration have repeatedly criticized UNESCO, accusing the UN agency that seeks to safeguard heritage of supporting “woke, divisive cultural and social causes.”
Trump withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO in 2019. The U.S. rejoined UNESCO in 2023 under the administration of former president Joe Biden. But the U.S. is slated to withdraw from the UN agency once again at the end of 2026.
Russia: Trinity icon
Contested state decisions impacting culture and heritage can be seen elsewhere.
In 2023, curators warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plans to transfer a masterpiece of 15th-century Russian religious art from the State Tretyakov Gallery to the Russian Orthodox Church would put it at risk.
Experts cautioned that removing Andrei Rublev’s Trinity icon from its climate-controlled museum case would likely damage it, a scenario that has now unfolded, according to a report from RBC media outlet publicized in the Moscow Times and the Art Newspaper in September 2026.
Painted in the 1420s, Rublev’s icon is widely regarded as a treasure of Russian cultural heritage and one of the greatest examples of Orthodox icon painting.
Putin’s transfer of the icon to the church in 2023 has been interpreted as politically motivated: a recognition of the loyalty of Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has steadfastly supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Turkish case: Hagia Sophia
In Turkey, five years ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan removed the museum status of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia and converted it back into a mosque.
Built in the sixth century on a site occupied by earlier churches since the fourth century CE, Hagia Sophia was the largest and most important church of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire for nearly a millennium. It was converted into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
In 1934 it was a made a museum by the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who sought to establish Turkey as a modern secular state. Hagia Sophia remains a singular masterpiece of Byzantine architecture and preserves unique mosaics of Roman rulers and Christian saints. It became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Areas of Istanbul in 1985.
In 2022, reports emerged that heavy machinery used for cleaning had cracked marble floor slabs inside Hagia Sophia.
Hagia Sophia is one of several former Byzantine-era churches in Turkey that Erdoğan has converted into mosques in recent years.
These acts have been seen as attempts by Erdoğan, amid wider strategies, to shore up support from his conservative Muslim base and represss political opposition.
The conversion of Hagia Sophia has been opposed by scholars, museum workers and world leaders.
UNESCO stressed the universal value of Hagia Sophia’s heritage and said it “deeply regrets” Turkey’s decision to strip Hagia Sophia of its museum status without prior consultation.
State-centred frameworks
Over the course of the 20th century, NGOs, Indigenous Peoples, religious groups and local communities have played a growing role in the conservation and protection of cultural heritage. Their participation has gained increasing recognition in international cultural heritage law.
UNESCO acknowledges that the protection of cultural heritage “cannot rest on State Parties alone” and that representatives of civil society can “strengthen conservation, foster awareness and education, empower local communities and offer independent monitoring when challenges arise.”
In addition to established understandings of intrinsic esthetic and historic values of heritage, new emphasis on development reconceptualizes heritage as a resource that can generate economic development, tourism, employment and social cohesion.
But legal frameworks remain largely state-centred, often limiting what civilian groups can accomplish without state co-operation.
These developments raise the question: How can cultural heritage be protected when the state threatens rather than safeguards it?
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
