CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 101st edition. The Vanadal in the museum.
Of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations.
Agnes Repplier, Americanism, in The Atlantic, 1916.
A letter from the illegitimate Trump occupational regime in the Oval Office to the Smithsonian:
The Honorable Lonnie G. Bunch III
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution
1000 Jefferson Dr SW
Washington, DC 20560
Subject: Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials
Dear Secretary Bunch,
We wish to begin by expressing our appreciation for the brief tour you gave us recently of the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and by acknowledging your work on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as the Institution’s role in shaping public understanding of American history and culture. We are completely aligned with your statement that the Smithsonian is “a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans.” We are grateful that you and the Board of Regents have expressed your commitment to the non-partisan, educational mission of this great institution.
As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story. In this spirit, and in accordance with Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, we will be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions. This initiative aims 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.
This review is a constructive and collaborative effort — one rooted in respect for the Smithsonian’s vital mission and its extraordinary contributions. Our goal is not to interfere with the day-to-day operations of curators or staff, but rather to support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.
The review will focus on several key areas:
- Public-facing Content: A review of exhibition text, wall didactics, websites, educational materials, and digital and social media content to assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.
- Curatorial Process: A series of interviews with curators and senior staff to better understand the selection process, exhibition approval workflows, and any frameworks currently guiding exhibition content.
- Exhibition Planning: A review of current and future exhibitions, with particular attention to those planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
- Collection Use: Evaluation of how existing materials and collections are being used or could be used to highlight American achievement and progress, including whether the Smithsonian can make better use of certain materials by digitizing or conveying to other institutions.
- Narrative Standards: The development of consistent curatorial guidelines that reflect the Smithsonian’s original mission.
Initially, our review will focus on the following museums. Additional museums will be reviewed in Phase II.
- National Museum of American History
- National Museum of Natural History
- National Museum of African American History and Culture
- National Museum of the American Indian
- National Air and Space Museum
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- National Portrait Gallery
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Materials Request
To initiate this process, we respectfully request that each of the museums listed above designate a primary point of contact and provide the following materials to our team (including for online content):
- 250th Anniversary Programming
- Exhibition plans, draft concepts, and event outlines related to America 250.
- Supporting materials such as proposed artwork, descriptive placards, exhibition catalogs, event themes, and lists of invited speakers and events.
- Current Exhibition Content
- Catalog and programs for all current and ongoing exhibitions, including budgets.
- Digital files of all wall didactics, placards, and gallery labels currently on display.
- Traveling and Upcoming Exhibitions
- Full index of scheduled traveling exhibitions (2026-2029).
- Proposals, projected schedules, and preliminary budgets for upcoming exhibitions over the next three years.
- Internal Guidelines and Governance
- Curatorial and staff manuals, job descriptions, and organizational charts.
- Documentation outlining the chain of command for exhibition approvals, scheduling, and content review.
- Internal communications or memos pertaining to exhibition or artwork selection and approval processes.
- Index of the Permanent Collection
- Access to an inventory of all permanent holdings.
- Educational Materials
- Teacher guides, student resources, and supplementary educational content linked to current exhibitions.
- Digital Presence
- URLs and descriptions of official museum websites and exhibition-related microsites.
- External Partnerships
- A list of active partnerships with outside contributors including artists, historians, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations.
- Grant-Related Documentation
- Copies of grant applications and funding agreements tied to past or current exhibitions, particularly those that influence content or presentation.
- Current artists featured in museum’s galleries that received a Smithsonian grant.
- Surveys and other evaluations of visitor experience
- Responses to surveys and other forms of evaluating the experience of visitors to the Smithsonian’s museums and users of digital content.
Timeline
To ensure clarity and coordination across all parties involved, we have developed the following implementation timeline:
Within 30 days of receipt of this letter, we anticipate:
- Each museum to submit all requested materials outlined in the first four bullet points above, including current exhibition descriptions, draft plans for upcoming shows, America 250 programming materials, and internal guidelines used in exhibition development.
- Review of America 250 exhibition and program planning and connect with curators and staff about their specific proposals.
- A staff liaison from each museum will be designated to serve as the primary point of contact throughout the review process.
- Our team will begin on-site observational visits, conducting walkthroughs of current exhibitions to document themes, visitor experience, and visual messaging.
Within 75 days:
- Museums are asked to submit the remaining requested documentation (items 5 through 10), including promotional literature, grant data, educational materials, and guided tour content.
- Our team will begin scheduling and conducting voluntary interviews with curators and senior staff. These conversations will help us better understand each museum’s goals and the broader curatorial vision guiding the institution.
- Each museum should finalize and submit its updated plan to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary and ensure coordination with the White House Salute to America 250 Task Force to align messaging and public engagement.
Within 120 days:
- Museums should 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.
If all benchmarks are met on schedule, we anticipate completing our review and preparing a final report for your review in early 2026. This report will include museum-specific assessments, institutional trends, and constructive recommendations for future exhibition strategy.
We view this process as a collaborative and forward-looking opportunity—one that empowers museum staff to embrace a revitalized curatorial vision rooted in the strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story. By focusing on Americanism—the people, principles, and progress that define our nation—we can work together to renew the Smithsonian’s role as the world’s leading museum institution.
We look forward to working alongside you and your team to ensure these iconic institutions remain vibrant, trusted, and inspiring for generations to come.
Lindsey Halligan
Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary
Vince Haley
Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Russell Vought
Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Management and Budget
The term "Americanism" goes way back. I know that it was used by Theodore Roosevelt, for example, who as an advocate of it. Indeed, he delivered more than one speech on the topic. I'm a fan of Theodore Roosevelt, although less than I once was, and I don't admire his jingoistic advocation of Americanism, although it has to be realized that it came at a different point in our history, and tended to combat a growing sense of internationalism as well as "hyphenation" in various American identities.
Starting particularly in the 1920s, Americanism began to change from a focus on celebrating an American identity, to being pro White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Roosevelt delivered a speech to The Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on October 12, 1915, for example, which meant that the solidly American former President of Dutch ancestry, who was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, felt comfortable addressing a body of Catholics. Indeed, that was somewhat the point as Catholics were by that time a major voting block, but WASP American culture detested them and saw them as alien. Roosevelt didn't want them to be alien, but American, meaning he was not only taking a stand against people identifying as "Irish American" or "German American" (two major Catholic groups), but also as White Anglo Saxon Protestants.
Roosevelt was not a racist.
By Woodrow Wilson's administration, a lot of Americans were reviving the thought that if you were an American, you needed to be a WASP. The Red Scare contributed to that in a major way. The country illegally deported people simply for being on the radical left, including some who were American citizens.
Imagine. . . deporting an American for not being the right kind of American. . . sound familiar?
This sort of Americanism became strong in the 1920s, although roots of it were clearly there before, and it continued on into the 1930s as sort of a plant of some of the opponents of Franklin Roosevelt, although Americanism took a real hit during that time period. It revived, however, in an ugly fashion after World War Two were it was once again associated with the far right.
It's been a feature of the revived post Reagan far right for some time, and has really been picked up by the populists supporting Trump. They cloak themselves with the flag and tattoo what they think are patriotic things on their forearms, not appreciating that our forbearers' might not necessarily be all that keen on their views.
Part of what is happening here is that Americans have frankly always had a difficult relationship with history, and they still do. Americans as a group do not know their history well, and tend to reduce it to highlights, and often associate those highlights with patriotic bromides. The Mayflower passengers were, for instance, a bunch of people seeking religious freedom in the American mind, not a minoritarian Protestant sect that neither the English or the Dutch were keen on tolerating, and they were not tolerant themselves (and, to add to it, most of the Mayflower passengers were not "pilgrims". The American Revolution was all about and only about liberty, people believe, and didn't start off as a protest over tea tariffs (oh my) and have as a goal unrestrained settling of Native lands and forced conversion of the Quebecois to the Church of England. Half the country seemingly believes that the Civil WAr wasn't about slavery, when that's all it was about. The Winning of the West doesn't feature any uncomfortable colonial aspects of it. And the dropping of the Atomic Bomb was certainly moral.
Like many things in our current culture, the counter revolution going on here has its roots in a post Vietnam War revolution which really did go too far. Early radicals, like those before the end of World War Two, often were in fact really radical, but they often really loved their country two. One Marine Corps officer who won the Silver Star during the Second World War, for instance, was an avowed Communist who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Today people like Donald Trump and Chuck Gray would go into screeds about him, just as Trump has about Zohran Mamdani. A person doesn't have to be, however, conservative or Christian to genuinely love the United States.
Going back, however, to the post Vietnam War Era, it seemingly was the case that during the war some on the American left came to actively detest their country, and as part of the general culture of the times, the band aid was ripped off of some of our problematic past. For people with a serious interest in, and knowledge of, history, much of that was irritating, but there were those who were generally shocked by it as their knowledge of history apparently stopped at 4th Grade. Even now, for example, I'll have people come up to me who are reading A People's History of the United States and cite something as if its a blisteringly knowledgeable new revelation. I'm not interested in anarcho-socialist Zinn's interpretation of US history much, and I'm always skeptical of anyone who titles anything as "A People's" anything, as that claims too much for your work and yourself, but still, the "revelations" people come up with are topics that anyone who graduated from high school should have a pretty good command of.
But then, many Americans have no real command of history. Entire events in American history, and world history, are unknown, I think, to the vast majority of Americans, which makes them easy targets for revisionist of the right and the left.
We're seeking a lot of far right revisionism going on right now. This sort of stuff is part of it.
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