As Trump Targets the Smithsonian, Museums Across the U.S. Feel a Chill

The artist Amy Sherald canceled her fall blockbuster show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery over concerns about whether or how the museum would display her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art abruptly postponed an exhibition of L.G.B.T.Q. artists this spring that was already partly installed, citing fund-raising issues.

And the Trump White House called this month for a review of all current and future exhibitions at eight of the Smithsonian’s museums, including several of its major art museums, to assess their “alignment with American ideals.”

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” President Trump wrote online this week before the White House released its own list of museum programming it considered objectionable.

It is not only Smithsonian museums — which have long been operated independently but are heavily reliant on federal funding — that are feeling the pressure during Trump’s second term. The president’s moves are being watched with concern by museums around the nation. Some have already changed their programming significantly — and sometimes abruptly — as they try to steer clear of potential hot-button topics including gender, sexuality and race.

“This is not just a concern for select institutions,” the American Alliance of Museums said in a statement decrying the pressures museums have faced in recent months to change or remove exhibitions. “These pressures can create a chilling effect across the entire museum sector.”

In February the Art Museum of the Americas, a small museum just blocks from the White House that is run by the Organization of American States, abruptly canceled two upcoming exhibitions featuring Black and queer artists. The museum offered no public explanation.

Cheryl B. Edwards, the curator of one of the shows, which was to have featured works by prominent Black artists including Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam and Sherald, said the museum’s director had told her it did not want to antagonize the White House after Trump issued an executive order taking aim at diversity programs.

“This is a chill, and an attempt to silence artists,” Edwards said.

Stephen Reilly, who founded a think tank promoting innovation in museums after a career leading them, said museums that spent the president’s first term at odds with his policies on diversity and immigration now seem to be trying to fly under the radar.

“If you avoid the red hot areas, can you be spared?” Reilly asked. “Or is there another red hot area coming ahead?”

Indicators of a Chill

Even before the president began his second term, museum directors were concerned about an increasing intolerance for art that tackles political topics or controversial issues. A survey of art museum directors that was administered last year found that 55 percent saw censorship as a greater threat now than it was a decade ago, and 65 percent said they have faced pressure to exclude certain works at some point in their careers.

In previous years, museums were cautious not to upset progressive audiences. An exhibition on the artist Philip Guston was postponed in 2020 by four major museums including the National Gallery of Art. Executives had worried that the artist’s satirical depictions of Ku Klux Klan members would offend visitors in the wake of the civil rights protests that followed George Floyd’s murder. Some critics described the postponement as “cowardly,” and the show eventually opened in 2022 with little controversy.

But nowadays, museums are worried about the reaction from conservative audiences. Arts leaders are closely monitoring the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce arts funding, revoke university grants and exert greater control over the Smithsonian Institution.

“There’s never been this much tension,” said Tom Finkelpearl, a curator and former commissioner for New York City’s cultural affairs department. “People are playing it safe and we’ll never know.”

Exhibitions Being Changed

When a traveling exhibition that had originally been called “transfeminisms” opened this year at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, it had a new name: “There are other skies.” Works about gender and sexuality by three artists had been cut.

Gerd Wuestemann, president and chief executive of Scottsdale Arts, a nonprofit organization that oversees the museum, said the exhibition was not censored. He said that the title was changed “to be less direct and more inviting” and that while logistical issues prevented some artworks from being included, the Scottsdale show still included works by several trans artists and had been executed “as faithfully to its original intent as we possibly could.”

The show’s original curators believe otherwise. “It was exhibited, but in a compromised form that betrayed its original intent,” the curators, Jennifer McCabe, Christine Eyene, Daria Khan and Maura Reilly, said in a statement to The New York Times. “This is the new censorship: not a loud rejection, but a quiet dilution. And it’s just as effective.”

The decision by the National Museum of African Art to postpone its spring show “Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art,” which was supposed to coincide with WorldPride celebrations in Washington, raised concerns in the art wold.

Jennifer Mitchell, a museum spokeswoman, denied that worries about the White House’s reaction to the show played a role. “This exhibition was on a very ambitious schedule to meet WorldPride and we did not have enough time to secure all the private-sector funds we had hoped to due to shifts in the fund-raising environment,” she said in a statement.

Industry veterans and some organizers of the exhibition said that the installation was already underway when it was postponed, so the museum would have had to make considerable expenditures by that point.

“This threatening atmosphere is not only incredibly sad but also dangerous,” said the gallerist Jack Shainman, who represents Toyin Ojih Odutola, an artist in the show.

The museum’s website says the show is now scheduled to open in “early winter 2026.”

At the Dallas Museum of Art, the artist Jade Kuriki-Olivo said that she received notice a few weeks before a planned April performance that the museum would move her event off-site and make it invitation-only. She said officials worried about receiving backlash for the performance, which would have included the artist — a trans woman — speaking to the audience while nude.

The museum’s interim director at the time, Tamara Wootton Forsyth, rejected the idea that any censorship had occurred. “As a large institution with a publicly funded facility, we have been advised that live nudity in our facility creates legal risk for the institution and everyone involved, which could also impact other arts organizations across the state,” she said in a statement, adding that the museum was pleased that it went ahead at another venue.

Concerns of Censorship

Julie Trébault, executive director of Artists at Risk Connection, one of the nonprofits behind the survey of museum directors, said her organization had seen an uptick in requests for help navigating censorship issues. In the first four months of the year, there were 22 requests for assistance by artists in the United States; last year, there were zero.

“This sharp increase is alarming and points to a rapidly deteriorating climate for artistic freedom domestically,” said Trébault, “particularly for artists engaged in politically sensitive or socially critical work, or those belonging to marginalized communities like trans, undocumented or other minority groups.”

Others are growing concerned as well. The National Coalition Against Censorship and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are issuing a statement this week signed by more than 150 organizations and 275 individuals stating that “cultural institutions must maintain autonomy over programming choices, curatorial decisions and artistic content.”

“They need the freedom to showcase visionary work that inspires, is unexpected, challenges dominant narratives and questions those in power,” the statement says.

Julia Halperin contributed reporting.