Lonnie Bunch, the renowned head of the Smithsonian Institution, has announced his retirement after nearly five decades, following intense clashes with the Trump administration. The administration pressured the Smithsonian over its exhibitions, demanding changes to align with Trump's vision of "American exceptionalism" and the removal of what he deemed "divisive or partisan narratives." Bunch, who has served at the Smithsonian for close to 50 years, will leave at the end of the year. His decision to step down comes amid President Trump's aggressive push for a "comprehensive internal review" of all exhibitions within the Smithsonian's eight museums, signaling his continuous attempt to politicize cultural institutions and suppress narratives that do not conform to his authoritarian ideologies.
Trump launched a vociferous critique of the Smithsonian on social media, labeling it "OUT OF CONTROL" and a bastion of "woke" culture for discussing the nation's troubling history, including slavery. This rhetoric illustrates Trump's deep-seated authoritarian tendencies and his incessant attacks on American institutions that do not serve his self-aggrandizing narrative, wasting zero time with re-defining the culture at the museum.
Trump’s effort to reshape American culture has extended far beyond a dispute over any single Smithsonian exhibit: since returning to office, his administration has sought greater control over the institutions, symbols, architecture, monuments, and historical narratives through which the United States represents itself. Trump installed himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center after replacing board members and its leadership; ordered the Smithsonian to remove what his administration calls “improper,” “divisive,” or “anti-American” ideology; directed federal officials to use funding and appointments to influence how museums present American history; pushed the restoration of monuments and Confederate commemorations removed or reinterpreted in recent years; revived the National Garden of American Heroes; promoted classical architecture for major federal buildings; and now wants enormous George Washington statues and a long-term “American Heroes” presence at the Smithsonian. The administration describes these measures as restoring patriotism and correcting ideological bias, while critics view them as an attempt to replace pluralistic accounts of American history with a state-preferred narrative centered on greatness, heroism, and national pride. Historically, that broader project—not any individual statue or architectural style—is what makes the comparison with authoritarian and fascist cultural politics relevant: such movements have often treated control of museums, art, monuments, architecture, and collective memory as an important part of political power.
Fascist movements have historically treated culture as a field of political power. They do not merely seek control of laws and government agencies; they try to define what the nation means: who its heroes are, what parts of its past deserve celebration, what art is legitimate, what architecture embodies the nation, and which interpretations of history are portrayed as decadent, subversive, or disloyal. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the Nazi project explicitly this way: after taking power in 1933, the Nazis sought to “change the cultural landscape,” purge supposedly foreign or degenerate influences, and align cultural institutions with their worldview. Museums, art, literature, architecture, theater, radio and film became part of that project.
Italian Fascism did something comparable but with a particularly revealing emphasis on national mythology and monumental history. Mussolini deliberately linked the Fascist present to the grandeur of ancient Rome, reshaped public spaces, commissioned monumental art and architecture, and presented Augustus and the Roman Empire as historical predecessors to the new regime. Scholarship on the Fascist-era Augustan Exhibition describes this as literally using historical representation and space to “re-map memory” and connect Augustus, Mussolini and contemporary Italy into a single political story.
That context makes what Trump has been doing more significant than any one Washington statue.
The chronology looks like this:
- January 29, 2025: Trump reinstated his plan for a National Garden of American Heroes, directing that it ultimately contain 250 statues and be completed “as expeditiously as possible.”
- February 2025: Trump replaced members of the Kennedy Center board, became its chairman, and the newly constituted board removed president Deborah Rutter. Trump had publicly criticized the institution's programming as ideologically “woke.”
- March 27, 2025: he issued the extraordinarily explicit executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It says federal historical institutions should become “solemn and uplifting public monuments,” tells officials to remove what the administration considers “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian, directs officials to consider Smithsonian funding, and orders federal monuments and historical materials to emphasize American “greatness,” “achievements” and “progress.”
- August 2025: the White House began reviewing Smithsonian exhibition text, educational material, websites and other content for its “tone,” “historical framing” and “alignment with American ideals.” At roughly the same time, Trump made classical and traditional architecture the preferred style for major federal buildings, particularly in Washington.
- July 24, 2026: a second executive order declared that Smithsonian leadership could not be trusted to tell American history with sufficient “honesty and gratitude” and ordered the government to use available authorities, including funding and contracts, to encourage changes. It even ordered federal signage outside the National Museum of American History criticizing the museum's own exhibits.
- September 2026: Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced that he will retire at year's end after this sustained conflict. Importantly, Bunch says his retirement is about age and family rather than being forced out by Trump, although he acknowledged that the confrontation had been stressful.
- Now, September 12: Trump is demanding a dedicated Washington exhibition through February 22, 2032, Washington's 300th birthday; an 11-foot Washington statue inside the museum; a roughly 30-foot Washington statue outside in place of the existing Infinity sculpture; and a “Center for American Heroes.”
The most important similarity isn't classical architecture by itself. The United States was using neoclassical architecture two centuries before Mussolini was born, and George Washington statues obviously aren't inherently fascist.
It is the combination that political historians would pay attention to:
First, delegitimize the existing cultural establishment. The regime says historians, artists, universities, museums or journalists have corrupted the national culture. Nazi terminology included “degenerate art” and “cultural Bolshevism.” Trump's language is different—“woke,” “radical,” “divisive,” “anti-American”—but structurally it performs a similar political function: existing cultural authorities are represented not merely as people with whom the government disagrees, but as institutions that have betrayed the authentic nation. The White House's own July report is titled Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage.
Second, replace pluralistic history with a morally prescriptive national narrative. Museums normally present contradictory evidence: extraordinary achievements alongside slavery, dispossession, exclusion, war, resistance and political conflict. Trump's executive order instead explicitly instructs federal historical sites to emphasize greatness and progress and prohibits presentations that it considers to “inappropriately disparage” Americans from the past. That is a significant departure from simply arguing about historical interpretation because the executive branch is prescribing the emotional and ideological conclusion toward which history should point.
Third, turn monuments and public space into political pedagogy. This is where the Washington statues, Garden of American Heroes and architectural directives fit together. Fascist Italy made exceptionally heavy use of monumental architecture, statues and selectively recovered Roman history because physical space can make a particular interpretation of the nation appear permanent, natural and inevitable. Mussolini's reshaping of the area surrounding Augustus's mausoleum is almost a textbook example: the built environment itself connected contemporary political authority to a heroic ancient past.
Fourth, redefine national membership around an approved conception of patriotism. The rhetoric shifts from “here is one interpretation of American history” toward “this is the authentic American story, and competing interpretations are attacks on America.” That distinction matters. Democratic societies constantly fight over monuments and history. Authoritarian movements tend to go further by claiming privileged ownership over the nation itself.
And there is a striking phrase in Trump's March 2025 order that makes this less inferential than it might otherwise sound. It doesn't merely ask museums to add patriotic material. It orders officials to “restore the Smithsonian Institution” so that it will be a symbol of “American greatness” and says Vice President Vance should work through the Smithsonian Board of Regents to remove “improper ideology.”
That's state-directed cultural policy.
(Source: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/new-smithsonian-head-resigns-amid-battle-with-trump-administration/)
