Lonnie G. Bunch III has served as a museum director, educator and historian — all positions in which he has demonstrated a skill for diplomacy. But perhaps no amount of charm or discretion can help him avoid the fight he now faces over the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, the cultural behemoth he stewards.
In an executive order last month that accused the Smithsonian of promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” President Trump called for an end to spending on exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law.”
What that order will mean in practice is not yet clear, given that Mr. Trump does not directly control the institution. But if the White House were to push for significant changes in programming, Mr. Bunch could face stark options — accede to the president’s demands, resign in protest or resist and perhaps be forced out.
Mr. Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has a track record of working with officials from both sides of the aisle. Sam Brownback, then a Republican Senator from Kansas, sponsored the museum’s founding legislation, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Mr. Bunch rose to become the secretary of the Smithsonian in 2019 during Mr. Trump’s first term as president.
Though the men do not share a personal relationship, Mr. Bunch gave Mr. Trump a tour of the museum in 2017, after which the President online called the museum “A great job done by amazing people!”
But the level of disregard the Trump administration now feels toward him is evident in the fact that he was not told in advance of the president’s order.
Asked directly on Tuesday whether Mr. Trump supported the institution’s leadership, specifically Mr. Bunch, the White House in a statement said, “President Trump is ensuring that we are celebrating true American history and ingenuity instead of corrupting it in the name of left-wing ideology.”
But later on Tuesday, asked to comment on how a book by Mr. Bunch depicted his 2017 tour with Mr. Trump of the African American history museum, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, responded: “Lonnie Bunch is a Democrat donor and rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book. Fortunately, he, along with his garbage book, are complete failures.”
In that book, from 2019, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump,” Mr. Bunch discussed Mr. Trump in several passages and described in some detail their museum tour, focusing in part on Mr. Trump’s reaction when they stopped at part of an exhibit that spoke of the roles countries like Portugal, England and the Netherlands played in the slave trade.
After Mr. Trump paused to read the label, the book reported, he said simply, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”
“All I could say was let’s continue walking,” Mr. Bunch wrote.
Mr. Bunch, a registered Democrat, declined to be interviewed. Election records show that his only federal campaign contribution was $250 he donated to Jesse Jackson two decades ago.
Though he has not commended publicly on the executive order, Mr. Bunch sent an email on Friday to Smithsonian employees that said he would work “as we have done throughout our history” with the institution’s governing Board of Regents, while also indicating an intention to persevere.
“We remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research, and the arts to all Americans,” he wrote. “We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy.”
He added that “we remain committed to telling the multi-faceted stories of this country’s extraordinary heritage.”
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said he believed Mr. Bunch, with whom he has collaborated on conferences, would be guided by what he viewed as best for the Smithsonian.
“Lonnie is an institutionalist,” he said. “He believes deeply in the integrity of the Smithsonian and its importance to American democracy. Whatever path he chooses, it will depend on what he thinks is best for the Smithsonian and its staff.”
Among cultural organizations, the Smithsonian — with its exhibitions on first ladies’ gowns, space travel and the Star-Spangled Banner — hardly has a reputation for edginess. But the executive order echoes some complaints aired in a 2023 congressional hearing, where some Republicans accused the Smithsonian of “left indoctrination,” and raised questions about drag events and about a graphic posted online by the African American history museum in May 2020 that referred to “hard work,” “individualism” and “the nuclear family” as part of “white culture.”
The graphic, removed six weeks later after it was criticized by Donald Trump Jr. and other conservatives, was cited in the president’s order.
When Mr. Bunch appeared at the 2023 hearing, he testified that he had been unaware of the drag events, called those aimed at children inappropriate, and noted the graphic had been removed three years earlier. “I agree with you very much that that document is not the kind of document that should be at the Smithsonian,” he said, while also defending the institution’s role in helping the nation grapple with issues of race.
Mr. Bunch, artfully, also brought along some objects from the collection — including a Green Bay Packer “cheesehead” hat, which pleased one of his toughest questioners, Representative Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican.
Mr. Bunch was more sharp-edged in his introduction to the catalog for “In Slavery’s Wake,” a Smithsonian exhibition that opened in December. He wrote, without naming names, that a “strong current of political leaders wants to prevent the public from engaging with Black history, which they deem ‘too divisive,’ and create a culture of silence.”
Mr. Trump does not directly control the Smithsonian, which is directed by a Board of Regents that includes Democrats and Republicans and is overseen by Congress. But given that private universities and law firms have acceded to Mr. Trump’s demands, the Smithsonian, an independent federal institution, is facing pressure to give ground, particularly since most (62 percent) of its more than $1 billion annual budget comes from congressional appropriation, federal grants and government contracts. The institution already closed its diversity office shortly after the president signed a January executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at organizations receiving federal money.
Two people close to the Smithsonian, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation, noted that Mr. Bunch, 72, has already served six years as secretary of the Smithsonian and might bow out for a variety of reasons, especially if he thought his stance was harming the institution.
Were it to lose federal money, the Smithsonian would be hard put to raise that much of its budget privately. Some portion of its portfolio of 21 museums, plus libraries, research centers and the National Zoo could face sharp reductions in their operations. On the other hand, closing popular tourist destinations like the National Air and Space Museum could cause considerable consternation among Mr. Trump’s constituents.
Mr. Bunch’s ascendancy to the top job at the Smithsonian is widely attributed to the diplomatic, fund-raising, managerial and curatorial skill he showed in bringing the African American history museum to life. The museum opened to great fanfare in 2016 and with 1.6 million visitors last year is the Smithsonian’s fourth most popular destination.
Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management and former president of the Kennedy Center in Washington, said that, given the emphasis Mr. Trump’s executive order gave to issues of race, the African American history museum could face particular scrutiny by the administration. “It’s a whole museum on a topic that the president doesn’t seem to want the Smithsonian to deal with,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s effort to influence programming at the Smithsonian resembles his takeover of the Kennedy Center in February, both institutions he largely ignored during his first term. Like the maneuvering at the Kennedy Center, the executive order regarding the Smithsonian has drawn considerable outrage.
“The Smithsonian has been preserving and sharing the American story for over 175 years, and I’ll continue to support the independence of this critical institution,” Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, who sits on the Board of Regents, said in a statement that referred to the president’s effort as “pathetic.”
In creating the African American history museum, Mr. Bunch had walked the line between recognizing white oppression and celebrating Black achievement. He said it was important that it not only be a space for Black audiences, but an institution that told “the quintessential American story” of progress.
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who helped build support for the museum, said of Mr. Bunch in an interview, “I do believe that the museum would never have been built were it not for his level headed and even handed approach.”
Mr. Bunch appointed Republicans like Laura Bush and Colin L. Powell to the museum’s board and at the grand opening, stood beside President Obama and Mr. Bush, who as president had signed the 2003 legislation authorizing the museum.
“He has a really good demeanor for a particularly touchy subject in the United States,” Mr. Brownback, the legislation sponsor, said in 2016. “He needed to have an optimistic outlook. This is not about retribution.”
Mr. Bunch’s finesse was evident in 2011 when the African American History museum held an exhibition in a temporary gallery about slavery at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia plantation. Mr. Bunch made a point of bringing the Virginia delegation from both parties through the exhibition in advance.
“They all didn’t say, ‘I love it,’” Mr. Bunch told The New Yorker in 2024. “But they got it, and there was no fire.”
Mr. Bunch, the first Black secretary at the Smithsonian, has, at other times been a forceful voice on issues of race, particularly after the 2017 demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., and after George Floyd was killed in 2020.
At the Smithsonian, Mr. Bunch has overseen a new ethical returns policy that restored 29 looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria; a reckoning over the scientific racism behind the Smithsonian’s collections of human remains; and the authorization of two new museums — the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum — which Congress approved in 2020.
Mr. Trump’s order, called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” cited the graphic and two other examples of what it said were ideological affronts by the Smithsonian. It found fault, for example, with the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which says that societies “including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege and disenfranchisement.”
The order also said the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum should make sure not to “recognize men as women in any respect.”
In addition, the order says that Vice President JD Vance should work with the White House and Republican leaders in Congress to ensure that future budget appropriations encourage programs in line with the president’s priorities and to reshape the 17-member board, seeking “the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.”
Last year, Mr. Bunch told The New Yorker that in a time of increased partisanship, the best approach is to “never lose your scholarly integrity” and to build “allies across both sides of the aisle.”
“The Smithsonian has always been able to rise above the political moment,” he said. “I don’t see anything that stops that process.”
Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of Mr. Bunch who directs the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard, said he could not predict how Mr. Bunch would respond to the pressures created by Mr. Trump.
“Only he can answer that,” he said. “I would be reading his mind.”
“All I can say is here is a man who himself made history by achieving the impossible by raising half a billion dollars in order to canonize Black history on the Mall,” he said. “If he is brilliant enough to do that, I have every confidence he is brilliant enough to deal with the current challenge.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/arts/design/smithsonian-trump-executive-order.html
