The Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex, is seeking societal transformation in the United States and promoting a narrative of “American wickedness,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told a House panel Tuesday.
“Teaching lessons about American wickedness is now the mission of the Smithsonian,” Gonzalez said during a hearing of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency. “It is the intent of the leadership, and it is precisely what they train the staff to do.” The hearing was titled, “Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past.”
Gonzalez noted that Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III and its National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig have pushed these narratives on “American wickedness” and societal transformation. Specifically, he said that the institution’s leadership sought to promote the “1619 Project,” a controversial history of America panned by both conservative and liberal historians. Simultaneously, it promoted the Black Lives Matter movement.
“You need to clean house and relieve all Smithsonian leadership of their duties,” Gonzalez said.
Hartig, in her remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, strongly defended the museum as patriotic, adding that it is committed to nonpartisanship and telling the full history of the United States.
“I have watched 10-year-olds with their families stand in front of the Star-Spangled Banner with their hands over their hearts. No one told them to,” Hartig told the panel. “That is the National Museum of American History at its most powerful, patriotism, not instructed but inspired.”
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The Smithsonian has been holding the true American story hostage. By hijacking this once-great institution, museum leadership traded the redemptive story of liberty and… pic.twitter.com/v1dB8AJOeM
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Hartig noted, “The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates.”
“We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions,” Hartig said. “We are also always learning when visitors, scholars, members of Congress, veterans and teachers, volunteers, tell us we’ve gotten something wrong, or only half right. We take it seriously. And we make the changes when the evidence supports them.”
During the hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., accused Gonzalez of an “ongoing vendetta” against the Smithsonian. He asked him who should decide what exhibits should be featured at a museum.
Gonzalez said a museum’s leadership should decide that question, but noted, “Taxpayers spend $1.1 billion on the museum, so the museum is accountable to the taxpayer.”
He said that societal transformation is “not why Americans entrusted these institutions to them.”
The hearing was prompted in part by a recent White House Domestic Policy Council report, “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage.”
She said the institution’s leadership takes the White House report seriously, but disagrees with its conclusion.
Subcommittee Chairman Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., pointed to explicit exhibits featured in the museum and asked if the images were appropriate for public display.
“You have pictures of bondage, you have some overtly sexual things up there, you have transgender folks,” Burchett noted. “Do you really think that content is appropriate for children?”
Hartig said the exhibit in question was, “Girlhood (It’s Complicated),” a temporary exhibit from 2020 in the museum that was not intended for children.
“In that exhibit, sir, with permission of the author, we shared a 13-year-old diary, which I believe is what you’re discussing, and in that diary, they wrote about sleepovers and Latin class and math exams,” Hartig said.
Burchett pressed her to answer the question: “You are funded by taxpayers, and taxpayers would like to know, is that appropriate?”
“Girlhood (It’s Complicated) was not designed for children,” Hartig said. “It had a label in the beginning of the exhibition that shared with parents about some of the topics that would be covered. And we do that with exhibitions that we think need that help.”
Later, Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, asked her about a “MASS Action Toolkit” which said the concept of objectivity was a tool of white supremacy. MASS was an acronym for “Museums as a Site for Social Action.”
After Hartig said objectivity is one of the goals of the museum, Gill referenced the toolkit and said, “Are you promoting a white supremacy culture at the Smithsonian?”
Hartig began jotting down notes on a legal pad without answering for a few awkward seconds.
Gill asked, “Is this a difficult question?”
Hartig said, “No, sir, I’m just thinking about the MASS Action Toolkit. We didn’t develop it.” She added, “No, we’re not promoting any ideology.”
Gill noted the Smithsonian used the toolkit as a reference.
Gonzalez later noted the toolkit was a three-year roadmap used by the Smithsonian staff to address race, class, and gender.
One of the Democrat-called witnesses, Yale history professor David Blight complained, “President Trump has declared war on free minds and free education.”
When asked by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., why “fascists and autocrats attack cultural institutions like museums,” he answered, “It’s because they believe that’s where you can control people’s minds.”
Gonzalez added that is a trademark of Marxist regimes as well.
“This is what Marxists do. I think that people who want to truly transform the country seize the cultural institutions in order to mold how people think, their own words,” Gonzalez said. “The leadership of the Smithsonian says constantly that he wants to use the museum to transform America, for societal transformation. They see history itself as a tool, an instrument, to change society. So, you only have to quote what they say they want to do.”
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
