Lonnie Bunch has resigned as secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, bringing to the end a tenure marred by firefighting attacks on the US institution by the Trump administration.
Bunch admitted to the New York Times, ‘It has been stressful’.
Bunch took the top job in 2019 having been the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) since 2005.
In March last year President Trump issued an Executive Order titled ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’, that specifically targetted the Smithsonian Institution, stating that it has ‘come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology’.
The Executive Order, which continued Trump’s war on so-called wokeness, aims to counteract what it labels as a ‘corrosive’ and ‘improper ideology’ that ‘seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States’. The policies listed in a section titled ‘Saving Our Smithsonian’ include prohibiting expenditure on exhibits or programs that ‘degrade shared American values’ and denying the existence of trans women within the American Women’s History Museum. Section 4, ‘Restoring Truth in American History’, orders the Secretary of the Interior to ensure all public monuments do not ‘disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)’, and to take action to reinstate monuments that have been removed or changed since January 2020.
The Smithsonian Institution is composed of 21 museums including the NMAAHC, the American Women’s History Museum and the National Museum of American History.
Kevin Young, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, went on indefinite leave and then left his post in this period; while in June, Trump said he had fired Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, bemoaning her as ‘a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI’. The president does not have HR overview of the Smithsonian, but Sajet subsequently resigned from her post.
A month later the painter Amy Sherald cancelled an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery due to censorship concerns. In a statement explaining her decision, the artist said that there were discussions in the museum about removing the work Trans Forming Liberty (2024), a portrait of a trans woman posing as the Statue of Liberty, from the exhibition. ‘While no single person is to blame,’ said Sherald, ‘it’s clear that institutional fear shaped by a broader climate of political hostility towards trans lives played a role’.
Bunch previously served as president and director of the Chicago History Museum from 2000 to 2005 and in the 1980s he was the first curator at the California African American Museum. In 2000 he curated the National Museum of American History’s exhibition The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden that explores the evolution of the executive office from George Washington to the present.
