Here Are The Craziest Examples Of What’s Happening At The Smithsonian
'Statue of Liberty, but black and trans'
Brian Stelter melts down as Trump makes the Smithsonian great again
The left's "long march through the institutions" was a great success. Since the time that slogan was coined in the late 1960s, numerous businesses, churches, law enforcement agencies, schools, and other organizations have been transformed into incubators for radical activists and amplifiers for anti-Western campaigns.
The marchers have, however, been stopped in their tracks by President Donald Trump, who has supercharged conservatives' reconquest of American institutions and normalcy advocates' corresponding war on DEI, critical race theory, gender ideology, and anti-Semitism.
Liberals — including CNN's chief media analyst, Brian Stelter — appear concerned that the president might successfully liberate the Smithsonian in time for America's 250th birthday as part of this broader campaign.
How it started
The president issued an executive order on March 27 titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."
"Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth," Trump wrote.
'Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination.'
"This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light," continued the president. "Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed."
RELATED: Telling America’s story is too important to leave to radicals
Trump blasted his predecessor's administration for advancing "this corrosive ideology" and identified several examples of the Smithsonian-housed anti-American propaganda at issue, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture's assertions that the nuclear family, rugged individualism, self-reliance, prioritization of work over play, emphasis on rational, linear thinking, punctuality, decisiveness, and a future-oriented outlook are "aspects and assumptions of whiteness and white culture in the United States."
"Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history," wrote Trump.
The president directed Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work with Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought to see to the removal of "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution, its 21 museums and 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
How it's going
The White House is presently whipping the Smithsonian into shape.
Halligan, Vought, and Vince Haley, director of the Domestic Policy Council, sent a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III on Tuesday, noting that they will "be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions."
'It really is a colonoscopy of the Smithsonian.'
The first phase of this review concerns eight museums, including the National Museums of American History, Natural History, African American History and Culture, and the American Indian. Other Smithsonian museums will be assessed in the second phase of the review.
In their review, Trump's team will:
- "assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals" when it comes to public-facing content;
- interview curators and senior staff to "better understand the selection process, exhibition approval workflows, and any frameworks currently guiding exhibition content";
- review current and future exhibitions, especially those planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; and
- look to the development of consistent curatorial guidelines.
Halligan, Haley, and Vought also requested that the Smithsonian cough up an index of all permanent holdings as well as documents relevant to its 250th anniversary programming, current exhibition content, internal guidelines, governance, educational materials, external partnerships, grant data, and digital presence.
While the reviewers want some of these documents submitted within the next 30 days, the remainder need to be turned in by the end of October.
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By Dec. 10, the White House team wants the museums to begin "implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials."
The letter indicated that the purpose of this review is to "ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions."
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News that "it really is a colonoscopy of the Smithsonian."
Gonzalez noted that in addition to glossing over or ignoring key aspects of what makes America exceptional, such as its recognition of natural rights, the Smithsonian continues to push leftist propaganda, engage in lies of omission, and glorify radicals such as Angela Davis.
Davis is a former Black Panther and recipient of the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize who was once accused of supplying weapons to a black supremacist who went on to murder Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and two inmates.
"She's an awful person, but she gets four exhibits and Justice [Clarence] Thomas gets nothing," said Gonzalez.
PEN America, a liberal organization that has fought parents' efforts to keep LGBT propaganda out of the classroom, condemned the White House initiative.
"Telling the story of the United States must extend to the full and complex history of its past and present, including an honest assessment of wrongs and injustices, and a recognition of the never-ending project of creating a more perfect union," stated Hadar Harris, managing director of PEN America's office in Washington, D.C. "The administration’s efforts to rewrite history are a betrayal of our democratic traditions and a deeply concerning effort to strip truth from the institutions that tell our national story, from the Smithsonian to our national parks."
Brian Stelter asked CNN's remaining viewers this week, "Do you want Trump White House political appointees, political aides vetting the tone and the content and the framing of museum exhibits? That is the question on the table here."
Stelter suggested that some say the White House's initiative "sounds like a Stalinist purge — sounds like something out of history books about regimes trying to control information."
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stated on Thursday, "The Trump Administration will proudly and diligently restore the patriotic glory of America and ensure the Smithsonian is a place that once more inspires love and devotion to this nation, especially among our youngest citizens."
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After Trump Executive Orders, Smithsonian Page Pushing Racist Propaganda Disappears
'If you identify as white, acknowledging your white racial identity and its privileges is a crucial step to help end racism.'Trump flushes woke programs at Smithsonian museums, orders return of leftist-targeted statues
The left's long march through the institutions was a resounding success. Numerous businesses, churches, libraries, law enforcement agencies, schools, and other organizations have for decades served as incubators for radical activists and amplifiers for pernicious ideologies.
Leftist marchers are, however, now being routed.
Conservatives and other normalcy advocates have in recent years undertaken a reconquest, enjoying success with certain academic institutions such as the New College of Florida as well as major businesses including Walmart, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere.
President Donald Trump — who has taken an axe to DEI, critical race theory, and gender ideology in the federal government and in federally funded organizations — continued his D.C.-focused purge of radicalism on Thursday, this time taking aim at the nation's premier museums.
Trump intends to rid the Smithsonian Institution, its 21 museums and 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo of radical leftist programs, policies, and installations.
In an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," the president noted, "Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth."
'Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination.'
"This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light," continued Trump. "Under this historical revision, our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed."
Trump slammed the Biden administration for advancing this "corrosive ideology" and cited the following as examples of the anti-American propaganda at issue.
- The Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibit "The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture," which represents that "[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement."
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture's assertions that the nuclear family, rugged individualism, self-reliance, prioritization of work over play, emphasis on rational linear thinking, punctuality, decisiveness, and a future-oriented outlook are "aspects and assumptions of whiteness and white culture in the United States."
- The "forthcoming Smithsonian American Women's History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of male athletes participating in women's sports."
The Smithsonian also enraged conservatives in recent years with the National Museum of American History's Hispanic exhibit portraying religion and history through a Marxist lens and the Smithsonian Institution's 2020 "Girlhood" exhibit featuring the racist founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, and a medical transvestite.
Trump directed Vice President JD Vance to work with senior staffers to "remove improper ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
Trump also tasked Vance and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to work with congressional lawmakers to ensure that Congress avoids bankrolling exhibits or programs at the Smithsonian Institution that "degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy."
Cognizant and critical of the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum's initiative to feature male cross-dressers in future exhibits, Trump also insisted that the museum does "not recognize men as women in any respect."
"Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history," said Trump's order.
In addition to flushing leftist radicalism out of the Smithsonian museums, Trump — whose administration has been reverting the names of federal lands and military bases to what they were before Joe Biden took office — set his sights on a restoration of that which the iconoclasts of yesteryear chose to eliminate from the public consciousness.
Radicals both inside and outside government committed to a campaign of destruction and deracination in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, digging up graves, toppling statues, renaming animals, melting down busts, and knocking out church windows.
Trump directed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to figure out whether public monuments, memorials, statues, or other properties within the Interior Department's jurisdiction were removed or changed during this radical campaign "to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."
The president demanded further the reinstatement of pre-existing monuments that were removed.
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Museum warns that paintings of the British countryside can evoke 'dark nationalist' feelings
A British museum owned by the University of Cambridge recently tried to shake things up, moving around its displays and providing new signage. In an apparent spasm of self-awareness, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum denied that his new "inclusive and representative galleries" were "woke." This denial, of course, prompted greater scrutiny.
It turns out the university's 208-year-old collection has been reshuffled and augmented in the service of a leftist agenda — one that seeks to repurpose art as propaganda and takes issue with too great a historical appreciation for the country that was England.
Luke Syson, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, shared with the campus paper Varsity in 2021 his apparent contempt for European civilization and its fruits, including his institution and the art that hangs therein.
"[The Fitzwilliam] has collections of material that were considered [historically] as belonging to the category of art, as belonging to civilizations that were deemed to be part of the chain of being that led to our own glorious civilization," Syson told the paper. "Despite the fact that European artists were annexing or citing artwork from Africa, it wasn't regarded as being part of the narrative the Fitzwilliam wanted to tell."
Richard Fitzwilliam was an Anglo-Irish nobleman who effectively founded the museum upon his death, conveying his extensive art collection and library to the University of Cambridge.
According to Syson, the narrative embraced by his long-dead benefactor "was a white, European, male-dominated history of art."
"And even if I thought that was acceptable, the rest of the world doesn't and I don't either," added Syson. "What I would really like us to be doing is to make sure that our public spaces are populated in the right way with works of art that we are commissioning and creating now. ... So we are creating an environment, in Cambridge, say, where you don't walk into colleges and see no people of color, no women: we're actually representing people."
Syson has gotten his way.
The Telegraph reported that the museum has dispensed with chronological displays since art history failed to conform with the inclusivity requirements of the day.
Accordingly, a contemporary black artist's painting of an interracial family will serve as an apparent check on the 18th-century painter William Hogarth's painting of a merchant family in a room now called "identity."
Barbara Walker, a contemporary painter and race obsessive, has her work featured in the same room as centuries-old classics.
Other artists, including John Singer Sargent, were shoehorned into exhibits on the basis of their supposed sexual preferences or immutable characteristics.
"I would love to think that there's a way of telling these larger, more inclusive histories that doesn't feel as if it requires a pushback from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in [this work is] what would now be called 'woke,'" said Syson.
Rebecca Birrel, the woman responsible for overseeing the shuffle, said, "Something I've been very conscious of, doing this particular rehang, is that you want to provide the audience with stories without being overly didactic or determining the meaning of artworks. It's just trying to provide possible readings, possible ways in, rather than definitive explanations."
"You want the work to have the space to speak for itself," added Birrel.
Despite Birrel's suggestion that she doesn't want to be didactic and Syson's aversion to being labeled woke, it is clear from the museum's new signage that they have failed on both counts.
The Telegraph noted that the sign for the nature gallery at the museum — where one can find the beloved English painter John Constable's 1820 "Hampstead Heath" — states, "Landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity."
"The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation," continues the sign. "Paintings showing rolling English hills or lush French fields reinforced loyalty and pride towards a homeland."
"The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong," added the sign.
The sentiment echoes that recently expressed by the British leftist environmental outfit Wildlife and Countryside Link, which suggested to parliamentarians in November that "racist colonial legacies continue to frame nature in the U.K. as a 'white space' and people of color as 'out of place' in these spaces and the environmental sector."
The group also claimed that "it is White British cultural values that have been embedded into the design and management of green spaces and into society's expectations of how people should be engaging with them."
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the daughter of migrants from Kenya and Mauritius who indicated last year that multiculturalism has failed, responded by underscoring, "No, the countryside is not racist. ... More left-wing identity politics, victimhood & division. Not everything needs to be about race."
The administrators at the Fitzwilliam Museum are evidently of a different mind, and it's not just those green hills and plains that raised generations of Britons that they figure are at issue.
The sign for the "identity" gallery denigrates many of those depicted on the paintings within, claiming that the portraits of uniformed and wealthy sitters were "vital tools in reinforcing the social order of a white ruling class, leaving very little room for representations of people of color, the working classes or other marginalized people."
The Telegraph highlighted that a portrait of the very man responsible for the museum, Fitzwilliam, is among the condemned. The label for his portrait notes that his wealth "came from his grandfather, Sir Matthew Decker, who had amassed it in part through the transatlantic trade of enslaved African people."
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Glenn Beck’s museum of American history tour will RED-PILL your leftist friends
Glenn Beck has been up to something since 2008, and now, it’s finally culminated into a truly one-of-a-kind experience.
In St. George, Utah, Glenn is sharing his collection of artifacts with the public.
The “American museum of our history — the good, bad, and ugly,” he calls it.
A truly fitting name, as the museum features everything from an original Superman costume to a harrowing Klan outfit to the glasses and leather case that stopped a bullet from killing Theodore Roosevelt.
Beck says that he created this museum “because we are losing our history” and “if we don’t learn from the past, then we’re going to repeat all of the mistakes that we’ve made.”
Back in 2008, when he first began collecting historical artifacts, Glenn had the distinct feeling that he needed to “protect and preserve our American founding documents.”
When you see this impressive accumulation of relics, it’s clear he has more than achieved that endeavor.
What Glenn has essentially done is piece together “the entire story of America and the stories that we’ve put out in movies and the other things that the rest of the world knows us for.”
Follow along as Glenn recounts the tragic story of a 16-year-old girl who survived the sinking of the Titanic — the story he believes inspired James Cameron’s cinematic masterpiece.
Listen in horror as Glenn describes the origins of the lobotomy and gender-transition surgery.
Observe as Glenn showcases a blood-curdling German medical book that was nearly destroyed due to the knowledge it contained but instead became the foundation of the medical field.
But that only scratches the surface. Marvels and horrors abound by the hundreds at Glenn’s American Journey museum.
Learn the real history of the United States — the one the far left wants to destroy. Embrace our country’s victories and its downfalls and never forget the TRUTH.
Watch the full clip here:
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How One Woman’s Art Museum Unifies People Over Beauty, Not Politics
The centenary of the founder's birthday is a chance to celebrate her wonderful creation.Gay Democrat introduces legislation to create an LGBT museum in Washington, D.C.
Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, an openly gay member of Congress, has put forward bills related to establishing an LGBT museum in Washington, D.C.
One measure would create a commission to examine the possibility of forming a National Museum of American LGBTQ+ History and Culture, while the other bill would officially create such a museum, according to a press release.
"As our community faces unprecedented attacks and attempts to erase our history, we must preserve and protect our stories for future generations," Pocan said, according to the release. "It is vital to remember our collective past – particularly when certain states seek to constrain and repeal existing rights by passing bills that harm LGBTQ+ youth and our community at large. Let's tell these stories, and honor the many contributions the LGBTQ+ community has made to this nation with a museum in Washington, D.C. I look forward to the passage of this legislation and to visiting this museum in the near future."
\u201cThank you Co-Chair\u00a0@RepMarkPocan\u00a0for introducing this bill \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08\n\nAs we approach LGBTQ+ History Month, we are reminded that LGBTQ+ history is rarely taught. The establishment of this museum will be crucial in celebrating & educating the public about the LGBTQ+ experience.\u201d— LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus (@LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus) 1664469760
According to the press release, the measure to create a commission would call for that body to craft "a fundraising plan to support the establishment, operation, and maintenance of the museum through public contributions" and to get "an independent review of this fundraising plan, including an analysis of the resources necessary to fund the construction of the museum and its operations and maintenance without reliance on federal funds."
The group would also be tasked to "Report on the availability and cost of acquiring collections for the museum, identify potential locations for the facility in Washington, D.C., and determine its regional impact on other museums," as well as to provide "Congress a legislative plan of action to establish and construct the museum," the press release stated.
The measure would instruct that the group's recommendations discuss whether the LGBT museum should belong to the Smithsonian Institution, according to the press release. Following the conclusion of the commission's efforts and the issuance of their recommendations, the legislature could weigh the other measure to officially create the museum.
"All 9 openly LGBTQ+ Members of Congress as well as 50 other members are sponsors of this legislation," the press release notes.
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