Smithsonian Meets White House Deadline, But What’s Next?

In a move that sees the Trump administration reasserting its influence over the United States’ national museum system, the Smithsonian Institution has reportedly met a White House deadline for the submission of materials relating to exhibitions and programming.

The Smithsonian Institution—which includes museums, libraries, the National Zoo, research centres and several landmarks—submitted documents including catalogues, wall text, exhibition labels, budgets, governance and curatorial guidance, exhibition programming, and plans for marking the United States’ 250th anniversary to the Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Management and Budget.

Following an initial request in August and a submission in September, the directors of the Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Management and Budget wrote to Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, on 18 December suggesting that materials offered ‘fell far short’ of what was requested.

‘As you may know,’ read the December letter, ‘funds apportioned for the Smithsonian Institution are only available for use in a manner consistent with Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, and the fulfilment of the requests set forth in our August 12, 2025 letter.’ The Smithsonian currently receives 62 percent of its budget from federal funds.

Although Smithsonian secretary Bunch confirmed to staff on Tuesday that the additional materials had been submitted, the White House has yet to confirm whether the most recent information transmission was satisfactory.

Artist Dread Scott, who co-initiated artist-activist group Fall of Freedom, expressed concern at the Smithsonian’s compliance. ‘It is sort-of anticipatory obedience, which museums and good institutions are feeling is the smart move at this point,’ Scott told Ocula. ‘Instead, they’re trying to appease, and I think that strategy is being spread throughout the art world.’

A few days earlier, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. (one of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums) replaced a 2017 portrait of President Trump in its ongoing America’s Presidents exhibition with a 2025 photograph by White House photographer Daniel Torok.

What dominated headlines, however, was the removal of the original wall label detailing the president’s first term, including two impeachments ‘on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection’, about which the White House had previously lodged a complaint. The museum told The New York Times that the removal was in advance of exhibition updates, which will temporarily close the gallery in April. According to reports, no other displays have been removed or altered.

‘The sanitation of history is always an ominous sign,’ Marci Shore, a history professor who left her position at Yale for the University of Toronto at the beginning of Trump’s second term, told Ocula. ‘The purging of references to Trump’s impeachments are not-at-all-subtle moves to mythologise Trump’s presidency.’

Neither the Smithsonian Institution nor the National Portrait Gallery responded to a request for comment. —[O]

Main image: The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery of the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C. (2013). Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.