Trump's take on museums: "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been," President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social yesterday. "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."
"We have the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums," he concludes.
Though I'm doubtful that the purge will be done in a measured, nuanced way, I share many of his complaints. Here's a good New York Post piece on how New York's museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History—have become co-opted by a rather specific agenda, the exact one you'd expect. More to his specific point: One of the Smithsonian museums made waves when it released an absolutely wild graphic saying that being on time, liking bland foods, and adhering to the scientific method are white, based on the work of Tema Okun and Judith Katz. And presidential portraiture is in no way immune from grossly hagiographic representation, as detailed by Crispin Sartwell in Reason. Whether it's explicit, stupid wokeness or more subtle works of art that serve to bolster state power, there's something for every libertarian to hate if you spend enough time in our nation's museums!
