The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History wants us to believe that there’s been a misunderstanding and that it’s not the latest major institution to wave a white flag before President Donald Trump. In a move that critics worried could be an attempt to better align itself with Trump’s vision, the NMAH, as The Washington Post reported Thursday, removed mention of President Donald Trump’s impeachments from one of its main exhibitions, “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden.” Congress leveled impeachment charges against Trump — twice. And Trump called the House of Representative’s 2019 vote to impeach him “an embarrassment to the country.”
But following accusations from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Friday that Trump was attempting to “rewrite history,” the museum said in a statement Saturday that information about Trump’s impeachment trials will be returned to the exhibit soon and that the placard mentioning those impeachments “did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.” The statement also said that the museum had not been “asked by any Administration or other government official to remove content from the exhibit.”
If you find that explanation hard to believe, that’s probably because the Smithsonian has been a preoccupation of Trump’s and his selectively backward-looking MAGA political movement. This year Trump released an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that blasted the Smithsonian’s acclaimed National Museum of African-American History and Culture as promoting “divisive race-centered ideology.” Shortly thereafter, Trump accused Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, of being a “highly partisan person, and a supporter of DEI” and called for her removal. She eventually resigned.
In that initial Thursday report, The Washington Post’s Janay Kingsberry noted that the NHMA edited the “Limits of Presidential Power” section of its exhibition by turning back the clock and removing information about Trump’s impeachments that had been on display since September 2021. In a statement to the newspaper for Thursday’s story, Smithsonian spokesperson Phillip Zimmerman said, “The section of this exhibition covers Congress, The Supreme Court, Impeachment, and Public Opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.” The timing has understandably raised eyebrows.
Only after that story was published, did the Smithsonian tell the newspaper that “a future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.” In Saturday’s statement, the museum mentioned the appearance of the placard and said the update would be made “in the coming weeks.” For accuracy’s sake, we should hope so.
As it stands now, though, the section only includes President Andrew Jackson’s 1868 impeachment, President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment and President Richard Nixon’s 1973 impeachment hearings. While Trump stands alone as the only U.S. president to be impeached twice, there’s presently no mention of this distinction.
As The Washington Post notes, the exhibit now says “only three presidents have seriously faced removal,” but that hasn’t been true for almost six years.
Though the Smithsonian insists it wasn’t pressured by Trump, The Washington Post’s Thursday report said the Trump references were removed from the impeachment exhibit after the Smithsonian undertook a full-scale content review after pressure from the White House and accusations of partisan bias. Again, that jibes with Trump’s statements about the Smithsonian’s museums and with him forcing out the portrait gallery’s director.
Indeed, after months of political pressure, the Smithsonian announced in June that directors at all of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and galleries were required to inspect their content and make any changes, including personnel changes, to “ensure unbiased content.”
Mention of Trump’s impeachments just so happened to be erased weeks later.
Over the decades, the Smithsonian has occasionally found itself ensnarled in political controversy and faced pressure to modify its exhibitions. For the 50th anniversary of the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan, the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum repeatedly adjusted its content about the decisive action and its tragic fallout in response to political outrage over even a whiff of critical reflection about the bombings. Eventually, the museum canceled the exhibition altogether, and its director, Martin Harwit, resigned after Congress called for his removal and threatened to cancel funding.
More than a decade later, the National Portrait Gallery made headlines for pulling a video installation commenting on the 1980s AIDS crisis on the grounds it was sacrilegious.
Of course, we’d suspect Trump of being involved in the editing out of his impeachments when he and his MAGA political movement support censorship and support revisionist histories that recast the United States and Trump himself as heroic and blameless.
Saturday’s statement from the Smithsonian says it hasn’t yielded to political pressure. Let’s hope that’s true because, like the dismantling of DEI programs and the multimillion-dollar settlements agreed to by universities under attack from Trump’s government, any capitulation from the Smithsonian would hit hard. That’s because we expect, we need, more from our civil society institutions if they are to serve as a counterbalance to political and economic power. Civil society, which includes our public museums, libraries and universities, is not separate from politics or the economy, but it’s important that those institutions not be dictated by them.
Let’s face it: Like all colonial projects, museums are not neutral,but they have long been essential in supplementing school curricula, serving as research centers, educating American and international tourists, and contributing to regional economies. It’s impossible to imagine Washington, D.C., without the National Mall and its assorted museums, monuments and memorials. But it’s getting easier to imagine wild additions and deletions being made at them without truth or the public’s trust in mind.
This is especially the case considering that White House spokesperson Davis Ingle characterized the Smithsonian removing mention of Trump’s impeachments as an opportunity to better “highlight American greatness” rather than what the Trump administration considers “divisive” content. We’re left to wonder what further changes we’ll see, who will make the final call and with whose interests in mind.
Truthfully representing our national history, including the shameful parts and not just the heroic ones, is the Smithsonian’s glorious burden. Unfortunately, with the way this latest move was executed, there’s reason to doubt it’s up for the challenge.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
